


The Good in the River

by HugeAlienPie, why_didnt_i_get_any_soup



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bigotry & Prejudice, Deputy Stiles Stilinski, Future Fic, Hate Crimes, Hate Speech, Multi, Mystery, Other, Serial Killers, Threesome - M/M/M, Triad Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/why_didnt_i_get_any_soup/pseuds/why_didnt_i_get_any_soup
Summary: Beacon County's dyadic community has suffered enough. The last thing it needs is a serial killer who targets dyadic couples, but that's what they've got. Stiles, Jordan, and Danny race the clock—and prejudices both expected and surprising—to stop the killings before they strike at the heart of the pack.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1,000 thanks to the great folks of the [Triad Verse Big Bang](http://triadversebang.tumblr.com/) for making this happen again.
> 
> 1,001 thanks to [templemarker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker) for going above and beyond in beta duty.
> 
> If I missed anything you think I ought to tag for, please let me know.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/132763692@N06/30774689090/in/photostream/)

> _There's a stream that trickles through all of us. It's always there. It's evil and we know this, so we force it to mix with the larger river inside us. We let it be consumed by the greater flow of good. But when the good in the river runs dry and there isn't enough of it to dilute the stream, then the stream flows faster and harder, uncontrolled, and it finally floods one life, then another, then another. And it's always the innocent who are easiest to pull down. It's always the innocent who are standing there on the banks and looking in, curious and trusting and sometimes, maybe, even a little brave._ –T. Jefferson Parker 

Danny woke slowly, his front cool, his back furnace-hot. Werewolf boyfriend accounted for, then; human boyfriend… He tried to sit up and look around, but a heavy arm snaked around his waist, locking him in place. "John and Jordan are here," Derek muttered into the back of Danny's neck. "New case."

A virtuous person would get out of bed now and face the day. Danny was not a virtuous person; he was an overtired, overstressed grad student, and the warm, sleep-soft werewolf spooned up behind him made it impossible to want anything but a lazy morning in bed. Danny closed his eyes, burrowed into Derek's body heat, and drifted back into sleep.

When he woke again, the position of the sun told him he'd slept for another half hour. Derek was awake, too; Danny felt it in the slow shift of his body and the slight unevenness of the breaths against the back of his neck. They'd barely moved in the last hour, though Danny's feet had drifted into the bed's unoccupied third, searching the emptiness for Stiles.

If Stiles were here with them, no force on the planet could've dragged Danny out of this bed. As it was, he struggled to find a reason he shouldn't stay here with Derek all morning, letting the shifting sunlight slowly warm them, napping and exploring all the bare skin between them.

Derek's hand swept low across Danny's stomach, just south of innocence, just north of intent. He drew the tip of his nose along Danny's hairline and dropped a row of nipping kisses above the knob of his spine. Danny shivered and arched, moving his arm back to sink fingers into the thick muscle of Derek's thigh. Derek groaned and shifted his hips forward. His half-hard cock slid along the crack of Danny's ass, but there was no insistence to it. From here, they could escalate, maintain, or disengage with equal ease, and the slow, languid possibility of it, the moment suspended in time like a fly in amber, made Danny's nerves sing with anticipation. He closed his eyes and trailed his fingertips through the hair on Derek's forearm, a holding pattern that allowed him to delay the decision as long as possible.

Derek gave a muted half-laugh and buried his face in Danny's neck. "We're not alone," he murmured.

Well, of course they weren't. At the Hale house, they seldom were. It was what Derek had wanted. It was what he'd grown up with and had never, in those halcyon days before the fire, imagined being without—nor, in the bleak years after, imagined having again. So he relished it, and mostly Danny did, too, for his own sake as well as Derek's. But at moments like this, he regretted the number of people who knew the door codes. "Who?" he asked.

Derek lifted his head and listened. "Allison. Scott. Argent." Danny turned his head in time to see Derek's nostrils flare. "They brought food."

Danny firmly believed it did Derek good to periodically be reminded that his boyfriends were 24 years old, one a perpetually broke grad student, the other a low-level sheriff's deputy, and both answering to the moniker "bottomless pit," which described both their metabolic and financial situations. He was out of bed and shimmying into his boxers in seconds, grinning. "Free food!" he announced as he pulled on his jeans.

Derek snorted and rose from the bed at a more dignified pace. But all illusions of detachment shattered as he froze, midway through pulling on a t-shirt, hands poking comically out the sleeves. "I hear the Voyager," he said, rushing to the window as soon as his appendages were clear.

Danny beamed at Derek's broad back as he braced himself on the window frame. He couldn't see the end of the driveway from the master suite, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. At this hour on a weekday morning, Voyager probably equaled baby. And Derek's excitement over his nephew was one of the most adorable things Danny had ever seen.

When Danny's feet hit the kitchen, they skidded to a stop. His eyes widened as he took in the overflowing island countertop, laden with a tower of croissants and danishes, a gorgeous bowl of fruit salad, and a giant serving platter mounded with what looked like an entire pig's worth of bacon, ham, and sausage. "Did you rob a chuck wagon?" he demanded.

Chris huffed and waved first at the extravagant spread, then at Scott and Allison, who were just finishing loading their plates. "It was for the six of us. Then John got called to the new case, and Mel had an emergency call to cover Renata's shift."

Danny shook his head sadly and squeezed Scott's arm as he passed on his way to the cabinet to grab a plate. "She needs to stop doing that. Renata's playing her."

Scott gave Danny his best "No shit" face and shoveled a crap-ton of blueberries into his mouth. "Believe me," Allison said, "we're working on it."

His plate piled with food, Danny settled in at the table between Chris and Allison, waved at Boyd, Cora, and Erica, and tucked in. Nothing urgent was going on in the world of werewolves, so the conversation was mostly Danny and Scott griping about their courses and Allison, who'd decided against grad school for the time being, gloating over not having to deal with college BS anymore.

About five minutes later, Danny poked Scott with the handle end of his fork and asked, "Hey, where's Derek?"

Scott frowned and tilted his head. Then he laughed and said, "He's outside playing Unidentified Flying Baby."

Danny rolled his eyes, but he was smiling broadly. "Hey, Derek," he said, raising his voice slightly, "the food's getting cold."

"And going into my mouth," Allison added cheerfully.

"Time to bring the UFB to Area 51."

Scott continued to listen, his smile growing even wider. "He's coming in, but he's grumpy about it."

Danny nodded. No nephew in the history of nephews had been doted on, Danny was sure, as much as Vernon Milton Hale V, more commonly known as Quincy, because Stiles _had to_ be twee about nicknames. Derek clomped into the house, Quincy bouncing happily in his arm, an endless stream of baby babble flowing out of his mouth.

Danny leaned up to press a syrupy kiss to Quincy's cheek. Derek brushed the nape of Cora's neck as he passed and squeezed Boyd's shoulder. Boyd smiled gratefully, if wearily, and fell on the food like a starving man. Cora grinned at them over her tower of bacon and sausage.

Almost ten minutes passed before the library door opened and John wandered out, mug in hand. "Don't take any more pork products!" Stiles shouted from inside the library.

John poured another mug of coffee and filched a piece of bacon from the platter without a trace of remorse. He stood behind Chris and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Danny," John said, "do you have a few minutes?"

Danny didn't bother checking the time. He had at least three hours before he had to get ready for his seminar—and getting ready just meant grabbing his notes on the reading and a shirt with no obvious holes or stains. Online seminars were the greatest. Danny stuffed the last bite of his lemon poppy seed muffin into his mouth and nodded. He stood, counted the number of werewolves at the table, and picked up his plate before anyone could steal the three strips of bacon on it. John eyed the plate forlornly, and Danny snuck him a piece of bacon so he could cram it in his mouth and eat it far too quickly before they reached the library.

Danny loved the library more than any room in the house besides their bedroom. The library was huge and sunny, and sunlight never fell directly onto the books, an impressive feat considering that the books were _everywhere_. The carpet was deep green, with thick pile and some sort of springy underlayer that yielded delightfully under his feet. The color made a fascinating contrast to the light wood of the walls and bookshelves.

The room's organization, such as it was, was less _Beauty and the Beast_ and more chaotic university used book store. Danny liked how _alive_ it felt, how he walked into the room and immediately knew it wasn't a showpiece. Every book in that room had been chosen, most by Derek but plenty by Stiles and Danny and the rest of the pack, and placed in that room because they were _beloved_.

John pulled out the chair next to Stiles for Danny and sat across from him, next to Jordan. He drummed his fingers against the folder on the table in front of him. "We need your help on this one, Danny," he said. He opened the folder and arranged six sheets of paper. Danny glanced at them long enough to see that they were the front pages of case files and then returned his attention to John, who said, "In the past month, there have been six murders across Beacon County."

" _Six_!" Danny demanded, staring at them.

"Three incidents, two dead each time," Jordan said. "Same M.O."

Danny collapsed in his chair like his strings had been cut. "A serial killer?" The others nodded solemnly. Danny blew out a sharp breath. "What's the M.O.?"

Stiles shook his head immediately. "Sorry, we can't tell you that right now." He grimaced. "You'd probably regret knowing." An air of embarrassment crept into Stiles' voice as he continued, "The thing is, it wasn't two random deaths each time. Each set of victims was a couple."

"A—" Danny turned his glance anxiously toward Jordan. "Are you and Lydia—"

Jordan held up a hand. "We're fine," he insisted. "The victims—" There was that embarrassment again as Jordan shifted in his chair. "They were all dyadic."

"Then it's a hate crime," Danny said dully.

For centuries, uneasy peace had held between dyadics and triadics, mostly by virtue of dyadics staying in the shadows and not announcing themselves. As with so many minorities, as soon as dyadics started standing up for their rights and demanding justice, the majority had started proving what complete fuck-knockers they could be. Reports of violence and discrimination against dyadics were up something like two hundred percent over the last ten years, and as far as Danny could see, things weren't going to improve anytime soon.

"Supernatural?" he blurted.

The others looked sad as they shook their heads. "As far as we can tell," Stiles said, "these are ordinary, 100 percent human killings. Just people being assholes to each other, like we do best."

Danny exhaled slowly and wiped his hands on his jeans. "What do you need from me?"

"Nothing _yet_ ," Jordan said. "Eventually we'll want you to look into the members of the local dyad groups."

"Stiles and Jordan are working on a court order for the membership rolls," John said.

Danny nodded and rolled his shoulders, already planning how to research the memberships of multiple organizations. Conservative estimates put dyadics at ten percent of the population, but the number who would join an organization would be considerably smaller. This was a dangerous time to be openly dyadic.

Danny had been 19 when he'd gotten caught hacking again. As a legal adult, there would be no suspended sentence or sealed record this time. But Sheriff Stilinski had offered him a deal. He could avoid prison _if_ he would put his hacking skills to the exclusive use of the Beacon County Sheriff's Department. He'd become a master of researching the seemingly unresearchable, learning how to spot clues that a suspect or a victim was a supernatural creature, or a magic user, or a hunter. He kept his nose clean otherwise, because the sheriff had thrown him a rope, and he wasn't about to make a noose out of it.

Danny nodded. He swept up the papers in front of him, in the order John had put them out in, and handed them back. "As soon as you get the names, I'm on it," he promised.

John smiled faintly. They wouldn't see a bigger smile out of him until the killer was behind bars, but this much he could do, this small, fatherly smile for a member of his team—and his family. "Thank you, Danny."

Danny started to stand, but Stiles reached toward him. He pulled back at the last minute, his fingertips just grazing Danny's wrist, maintaining a façade of professionalism. "Hey, listen," he said, "one other thing." When Danny raised his eyebrows, Stiles swallowed hard and said, "We can't tell Derek about this one. Tell him you're working a case for us, but that's _it_. No details."

Danny frowned at him. "Why would Derek—oh, shit." He rubbed his hand over his face and squeezed his eyes shut. "Malia." He swallowed as he imagined Derek's reaction if he found out his cousin was a high-vulnerability target for a serial killer. "Yeah, I'll—ARGH. Stiles! I am _shit_ at keeping things from him."

Stiles smirked. "I _know_. I have three spoiled surprise birthday parties and a weekend in Yellowstone as proof." His smirk vanished as he leaned forward, allowing himself to take Danny's hand this time. "But this case is tense already. The last thing we need—well, okay, the _actual_ last thing we need is public panic. The second-to-last thing we need is the anxious relatives of _every_ dyadic in the county demanding to know how we're protecting their loved ones." He looked into Danny's eyes, and Danny forced himself to stay focused on how serious and determined they looked, rather than on how the sunlight made them look like sun-warmed honey. "We're gonna catch whoever did this, I swear. And we'll do it a lot faster if Derek's not pacing grooves in the floor behind us at every step."

Danny squeezed Stiles' hand and gave a small, reassuring smile back. "I understand," he promised. "I won't tell him."

"Thank you, Danny," John said again. It was both sincere gratitude and an obvious dismissal.

Danny gathered his plate—he hadn't touched his bacon, but he couldn't offer the rest to John with Stiles sitting right there—nodded to the others, and left the room.

Things in the dining room looked more or less the way he'd left them, with the exception of Chris and Allison having disappeared. Scott shrugged at Danny's raised eyebrows. "Hunter stuff. I don't ask unless I have to."

It was a sage life plan. Danny nodded and slid into the now-empty seat next to Derek.

Derek and Quincy were messes. Their faces and hands were sticky with jam and fruit juice. The sausage link on the floor between dining room and kitchen had probably been thrown by tiny, greasy fingers. Derek had a _long_ combing session ahead to get the crumbs out of his beard. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. Danny snuck out his phone and took a stealth picture before Derek could notice.

Danny slipped his phone back into his pocket and stole a blueberry off Derek's plate. Quincy looked like it was the worst betrayal imaginable, but Derek blew a raspberry on his cheek and said, in the adorable soft tone that was the closest he came to "baby talk," "You don't understand, because you're an only child, and that's okay. But Danny and I grew up with sisters, and now we live with Stiles. Sometimes you take what you can get."

Danny coughed into his napkin to cover his laugh. Across the table, Cora tried unsuccessfully to hide her grin by looking at her plate. Danny leaned over and kissed Derek's cheek, because how could he not?

Derek blushed under his beard and rubbed his cheek against Danny's. "Everything okay in there?" he asked, jerking his chin toward the library.

Danny shrugged. It was the most difficult shrug of his life. "New case. Probably have to look over some organization membership lists in a couple days. Pretty boring."

Derek hummed and didn't press for details. Somehow, Danny felt even guiltier about that.

Fifteen more minutes passed before Stiles, John, and Jordan reappeared. Scott and Cora had left for campus, and Boyd was packing up Quincy's stuff to take him to the daycare at Erica's office before he went to his own job. When the bags were packed, Boyd held out his hands for Quincy, and Derek handed him over with obvious reluctance.

John, Jordan, and Stiles left a few minutes later, Stiles with quick kisses for Derek and Danny, John with an unsubtle glance at Derek to remind Danny about his promise. And then Danny and Derek were, for the first time in days, alone in the house.

Danny went into the kitchen and started loading empty serving dishes into the dishwasher. When he bent over to put the plates in the lower rack, he wasn't surprised by the big, warm hands that settled on his ass. "We were in the middle of something," Derek murmured, and Danny shivered at the warm tickle of Derek's breath against his neck.

Danny shut the dishwasher door with a decisive click. "You are absolutely right." It was never as good with just two. But the day was a beautiful and warm, and they were both free as the birds for a couple hours. Danny kissed Derek hard and fast and yelled, "Race you!"

Derek let him win the race up the stairs. But in the end, with Derek on his back, relaxed and smiling, chasing after Danny's fingers to work them deeper, Danny felt like they were both winners.

* * *

By the time Stiles and Parrish got out of their cruiser for their fourth interview, Parrish's mood had shifted from ordinary annoyance at fruitless interviews to obvious aggravation. Stiles knew he was fighting it, but none of his usual tricks were restoring his sunny disposition.

"Hey, dude," Stiles said, pausing outside Brenda Humboldt's gate, "you okay?"

Parrish ground his teeth. "How many dyad organizations does Beacon County need, anyway?"

Stiles hadn't known many dyadics growing up. His parents might've had a couple friends or coworkers, but people didn't talk about it much then, especially in a conservativish area like Beacon Hills. Two guys had been out in high school, but Stiles hadn't known any dyadics _well_ until Malia and Kira came out.

Still, he knew the statistics—roughly ten percent of the population was wired to prefer being part of a couple, rather than a triad. Which in Beacon County meant about 50,000 people. Eight groups didn't seem like enough, when he looked at it that way.

Stiles shrugged. "Different groups do different things." Parrish grunted. "Uh, hey," Stiles said. As long as Parrish was already pissed, he might as well keep rolling. "Date last night, right?"

Parrish's jaw clenched, and he turned his head away from Stiles. "Yeah," he said. "Date last night." He reached out and rang the doorbell.

Stiles huffed but dropped it. They'd talk about it eventually, but for now the work took priority.

Brenda Humboldt was 63 and, according to their records, lived alone in this charming bungalow in Beacon Heights. She was tall and curvy and dressed like a fashion designer. Her mostly gray hair was piled up in a complicated knot held together with a single chopstick and a lot of willpower. Red-framed bifocals perched at the end of her nose. She was the leader of Two Together, which advertised itself as an activity organization, alternating inside meetings with group outings, everything from mini golfing to mountain biking.

"Oh!" she said when she saw them. "Deputies. My goodness."

Parrish tried a winning smile. "Ms. Humboldt, I'm Jordan Parrish. We spoke on the phone earlier?"

Humboldt looked flustered, and Stiles hid a grin. The file said Brenda did corporate interior design, and Stiles was intimately familiar with the kind of forgetfulness and distraction the creative type was prone to. "Oh, of course!" she said, standing aside and sweeping them grandly into the house. "How forgetful of me, I'm so sorry. Please come in, Deputy Parrish. And—" She raised her eyebrows at Stiles.

"Deputy Stilinski, ma'am," Stiles said politely. Humboldt smiled and nodded. If she'd recognized the name, she gave no indication.

Inside, the house was a stereotypical artist's space, cluttered but clean. Stiles counted at least three cats watching them from various surfaces, including the obviously well-loved purple armchair falling apart beside the yellow couch. Humboldt swept the cat to the corner of the chair and settled down next to it. The cat ruffled its fur in indignation and jumped down.

Stiles and Parrish settled on the sofa, angling their bodies toward Humboldt. "Ms. Humboldt," Parrish began, "I'm afraid we have bad news. In the past month, six dyadics have been killed in Beacon County. We suspect a serial killer."

Humboldt gasped, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. "Oh, god," she murmured, voice muffled behind her hand, eyes wide above it. "Are—are you sure? I mean, it couldn't have been an accident, or a coincidence, or—"

Stiles shook his head. "I'm sorry, Ms. Humboldt, but there's really no chance of that."

"May I..." She hesitated and looked embarrassed. "Could I... see? Are there pictures?"

Stiles and Parrish exchanged a look. Few people asked to see crime scene photos. Stiles mouthed "artists" before Jordan turned back to Humboldt and shook his head. "I'm afraid that's not possible at this juncture, Ms. Humboldt. But we're hoping we can give you a list of names so you can tell us if any of the victims belonged to Two Together."

"Ah." Humboldt nodded. "Yes, of course." She held out her hand, and Stiles handed over the list, watching her face closely.

He could've watched distantly, or distractedly, and there still would've been no mistaking the change that came over her as she scanned the list. The color drained from her face, and her mouth dropped open. "Th-these are the victims?" she asked in a small, quavering voice that was nothing like the crisp professionalism of a moment before.

"Do you recognize any of the names, Ms. Humboldt?" Parrish asked gently.

"Reuven Johnson and Lester Harwick. They belonged to Two Together."

After that, the interview was more straightforward, if more involved. Humboldt gave them a few details about the two victims. She insisted that neither of them had enemies that she knew of, and that she couldn't imagine them having any.

"Reuven could be acerbic when someone got his back up," she said. "Two Together is a social organization, but with a group of dyadics, you can never leave politics completely out of the picture. We get into discussions about important legislation and current events, and he takes— _took_ —fairly radical positions. But nothing that anyone would want to _kill_ him over. And his husband was a _wonderful_ man."

Stiles and Parrish exchanged another startled glance. "Husband?" Stiles asked tentatively.

Humboldt looked at them, sadness and anger replaced by steel in her eyes. "Deputies," she said tartly, "just because the United States government refuses to recognize two-person marriage doesn't mean that it doesn't _exist_. Reuven and Les had a lovely, _binding_ marriage ceremony in San Francisco less than a year ago." Her fierce expression crumpled, and her lip wobbled. "And n-now th-this," she said. Stiles hastily pulled a tissue out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She accepted it with a sniffle and wiped her eyes.

They stayed a few more minutes, gathering what Humboldt considered relevant information about the victims. She seemed like a perfectly nice woman, but her alibi for all three killings was a shaky "I was here, working," and other than a convenience store she'd stopped at the night of the third murder, only her cats could corroborate.

"Ms. Humboldt," Parrish said, "we'll need a copy of your membership rolls, if you have them. A handwritten list will suffice if you don't."

"I hope you don't expect me to just hand that over to you, Deputy!" Humboldt said sharply.

Parrish reached into his folder and pulled out the court order they'd gotten this morning. "We have court authorization," he said.

She sighed, read the court order thoroughly, and stood. "I'll just be a minute." She narrowed her eyes. "You may _not_ poke around anyplace else in the house while I'm gone." They nodded their understanding and sat patiently while she disappeared into a room in the back of the house, returning a moment later with a thin sheaf of papers clipped together.

When they said thank you and goodbye and left the house, Stiles felt more optimistic than he had since they started these interviews. It was far from the key piece they would need to crank this investigation into high gear, but it was more than they'd had when they went in.

Maybe Parrish felt the same buoyancy. Or maybe he appreciated how calm Stiles had been as they delivered the awful news and waited for the membership list. Or maybe the break in the case made the other problems in Jordan's life seem less insurmountable. As they walked up the sidewalk to the cruiser, he admitted, "Lydia didn't like her."

Stiles glanced over but returned his gaze quickly to the membership roster in his hands. "Sucks, man," he said.

"Lydia," Parrish said carefully as he unlocked the cruiser and slid into the driver's seat, "hasn't like _anyone_ we've gone out with in the past year and a half."

Stiles' eyebrows went up and his lower jaw went down—for a brief second, until he pulled his face back into shape and whistled. "Dude. _Dude_."

Parrish laughed weakly as he pulled away from the curb. "I never expected this to be easy. She's _Lydia Martin_. Of course her standards for a third—even a temporary one—will be exacting."

Stiles nodded exuberantly. "Oh, my _God_ , yes," he said, too loud. He lowered his voice and continued, "She and Jackson never had a third. They went out with a lot of people, but no one stuck." He grinned. "I assumed Jackson's _winning_ personality drove them away." He drummed his fingers against his knees for a minute. There was obviously more to the story, and when Parrish didn't cough it up, he prodded, " _But_?"

"But what?" Parrish asked with a nonchalance as thin as tissue.

"Come on, man. I get that a year and a half of rejected thirds isn't the most, like, uplifting of circumstances, but I know you. Something else is going on, or you wouldn't be _this_ upset about it."

Parrish sighed and lifted a hand off the wheel long enough to rub his face. "I, um." He groaned. "I'm having... God, I don't even—the biological clock is ticking. Loudly."

A wide grin split Stiles' face, and he said excitedly, "You want hellpuppies!"

Parrish rolled his eyes, but he didn't sound upset when he said, "Yes, Stiles, I want hellpuppies." He shoved Stiles' shoulder lightly.

Stiles deflated as he followed the implication through to its logical, and depressing, conclusion. "But Lydia's rejected every potential third."

"I'm not about to bring a child into the world in a two-parent household." Stiles opened his mouth, and Parrish held up a hand to stop him. "I know kids raised by dyadic parents are as well-adjusted as kid raised by triads. And I know that you, Scott, and Allison lived that way for at least part of your lives, and you turned out fine. But I wouldn't know how to parent that way, and I'm not interested in finding out. Plus, Lydia has made it very clear that she has no intention of carrying a child while she's focused on school and her career. That's why I stepped up our search for a third."

"But Lydia's turning them all down."

They rolled up to a stop light. Parrish's jaw tightened. "She said she has to be _twice_ as selective, because I'm not being selective at all. She says I'll take anyone who's single and breathing because I'm so desperate for kids." He took a deep breath, and Stiles braced for something _big_. "It's this damned case," Parrish said, eyes firmly on the road as the light turned green. "It's made me wonder if..."

Stiles inhaled sharply. "If Lydia is dyadic."

Parrish squeezed his eyes shut for a second. "She's never given any indication that—but she's been _so_ _adamant_ about everyone—and if she and Jackson never—"

"Hey." Stiles put a hand on Parrish's arm, and Parrish looked over, eyes wide. "Parrish, it's okay. I have faith in you guys. You'll work it out."

"I love her so damned much, Stiles," he said quietly. He gave a half-smile. "I don't have to tell you how easy it is to be completely devoted to her."

Stiles lifted his hand off Parrish's arm and held it in classic defense position. "Hey, man, I know about devotion to the _idea_ of Lydia. You've got us all beat on _actual_ devotion."

"Yeah," Parrish said, "and it's not a hellhound thing. It's me, loving her. When we started dating, I didn't think the age difference would be a problem. I mean, I looked at you and Danny and Derek—"

"Whoa, hey," Stiles said, shaking his head, "we're a special case. I don't think you should be using us as role models."

"But that's just it. I figured, if the you three worked it out, in spite of _everything_ your lives have been, then Lydia and I could—I mean, no offense, but either of us alone is more emotionally stable than you guys combined."

Stiles considered and then nodded. "Fair."

"But we're at two _very_ different points in our lives right now. And maybe we always will be. I'm not sure how much longer we can keep going with this hanging between us."

Stiles smiled, but it felt tinged with sadness. "You'll work it out," he said again. He didn't add, "one way or another," but he thought Parrish caught the implication.

Stiles scanned the papers in his hand. Two Together was modestly sized, compared to the other organizations they'd looked into. They had two hundred on their mailing list, of which Brenda said about fifty were active, and a core group of about twenty made up the bulk of their regular attendance. Stiles read to the end of the list and then chuckled and flipped it over, pulling his pen out of his ticket book and scribbling on the back.

Parrish raised his eyebrows. "Tampering with the evidence, Stilinski?" he asked dryly.

Stiles rolled his eyes as he clicked his pen off and returned it to his pocket. "If I have learned anything from watching Danny work his wonders for the last three years, it's that when you ask for a membership list, the leader pulls it from the email database, and they're usually not on it. He has the sheriff and me well trained to check for them." He glanced over at Parrish. "Surprised he hasn't done the same with you."

Parrish shrugged. "Would you believe I haven't interacted with Danny much in work mode? You and the sheriff usually take care of it."

Stiles considered and then said, "Huh." He opened the accordion file at his feet and put the member roster in it alongside the victim photos and list of interviews. Then he sat back and angled himself so he could look at Parrish more fully. "I know I don't stand much chance of objectivity here—"

Parrish snorted. "No shit," he muttered without heat.

"Hey," Stiles said, mostly unperturbed, "I love Derek and Danny, but I loved Lydia first, and that doesn't go away." He rubbed a hand across his hair. "I was _trying_ to say, asshole, that you're a good guy, too. You deserve happiness." He frowned. "Even if it means you and Lydia have to call it quits."

Parrish set his jaw and put the cruiser in drive. "Let's go," he said. "We have three more organizations to investigate." Stiles felt a prick of shame that he was grilling Parrish about his personal life in the middle of a sextuple homicide case. But it probably wasn't going to be a big enough prick for him to stop.

* * *

"And that's about the size of it," Stiles said. Kira couldn't see his hands, but she heard his fingers tapping his legs under the table.

Kira leaned back with a sharp exhale. She looked over at Malia, who grimaced and grabbed her hand. "You're sure it's a hate crime?" Kira asked, and then winced at how naïve that sounded.

She _wasn't_ naïve. Not about this. The statistics on hate crimes against dyadics were enough to make her want to hide in bed some days. And she had no illusions about the safety of Beacon County where dyadics were concerned—not exactly Murderopolis, but hardly Utopia. But having a general sense of danger was a hell of a lot different from knowing that an actual killer was on the hunt in the county.

Jordan shrugged, trying to downplay it, but you could downplay six homicides so far. "We're looking for other points of commonality between the victims, but so far, we only know for sure that they were all dyadic, and they all belonged to either Two Together or Mission Dolorosa. It looks like they were targeted because of either their orientation or their ties to those specific organizations."

"Which is why you're not in danger now," Stiles added, swirling the straw around in his Sprite. "So far, at least as far as we know, the only victims have been members of the groups." He scratched his neck awkwardly. "But if the killer branches out, we could be looking at the entire dyadic population of Beacon County being under threat."

Kira exhaled again, shakily. A restless feeling was starting to spark under her skin. It made her want to jump into the thick of this thing and do something reckless. "Okay," she said. "Okay. What's the next step?"

Jordan and Stiles exchanged a startled glance, and Malia rolled her eyes. "You've known her for a long time, guys," she said. "Did you think she was going to sit back and let you handle it?"

"Well, she _should_ ," Stiles snapped. "Because it's our _job_."

Kira snorted. Jordan and Stiles looked perplexed, but Kira waved them off. Educating two of Beacon County's finest about the giant problems in their force would be a waste of time and energy.

Jordan kept his eyes on a point over Kira's shoulder, but he put on his game face and said, "Our next step is to send someone undercover at Two Together and someone at Mission Dolorosa—"

"Great!" Kira said brightly, feeling cheerier than she had since the words "serial murder" had first left Stiles' mouth five minutes ago. "So we're going to Two Together. When do we start?"

Everyone paused. Malia only raised an eyebrow at her, but Stiles and Jordan looked like they were about to be felled by the vapors like swooning Victorian heroines.

"I—you—what?" Stiles asked. Malia snorted.

"Stiles is trying to say," Jordan said, shooting his partner a glare, "that we can't have untrained members of the public going on undercover police assignments."

Kira shrugged. "So _train_ us." Every time Stiles and Jordan resisted, Kira wanted it more. She knew it wasn't that simple, but she'd be damned if she let a member of the BCSD go into this. They'd be made—and probably killed—in a day or less.

"That's not—"

"Look," Malia cut in, leaning forward, "if you want to catch a killer in dyadic organizations, you have to send someone dyadic."

"And," Kira said, "the Beacon County Sheriff's Department has, famously, _no_ dyadic members."

"But, I mean," Stiles sputtered, flailing wildly, "that's because—"

"Stiles," Kira broke in before he could hurt himself, "I like you. I like your dad. For the most part, I think he's a great sheriff with a great group of officers working under him. But you _know_ there's been trouble with the dyadic community. You can't deny it." She held up fingers as she made her points. "First, as I mentioned, there are _no_ dyadics on the force. I mean, it's 2021. What's even up with that? Even Beacon Heights has a dyadic group in the schools, and you _know_ how conservative they are. Second, BCSD deputies harass dyadics all the time."

"You know that's not true," Jordan said tightly.

"I know it is," she shot back, though she kept her voice calmer than she felt. "Dyadics in Beacon County make up five percent of the population but 18 percent of the arrests and citations. Third only to African Americans and trans people." Every dyadic in the county knew these stats. They sickened Kira, and sometimes the _point_ of knowing escaped her—did it make them safer? Probably not. They said knowing was half the battle, but what was the other? She and Malia had their own weapons, but most dyadics weren't so lucky. She looked at them through narrowed eyes. "Now, unless you want to try claiming that, on the whole, we're not a law-abiding population..." She tilted her head in invitation. Stiles flushed and stared at his drink. Jordan clenched his jaw and looked stoically hurt. "Third, complaints from dyadics or perceived dyadics take twice as long to answer and resolve as those from triadics."

"Oh, come _on_!" Jordan said, throwing his hands in the air. "That's ridiculous. How would we _know_ that when a call comes in?"

Kira crossed her arms and glared at him. "Jordan. Save it for someone who didn't spend most of high school sneaking around the sheriff's station. I've _seen_ the interface that pops up when a call comes in. 911 or nonemergency line. It shows everything about the caller but their favorite brand of toothpaste. Including relationship status."

"But that doesn't mean—"

"This isn't a nice place for dyadics," Malia said flatly. "It's barely nice for triadic couples who haven't found a third yet." She reached across the table and poked Jordan in the arm. "Go ahead and tell us you haven't noticed that."

Jordan looked her flat in the eye. "I haven't noticed that."

Malia and Kira smirked, and Stiles rolled his eyes. "When will you learn that you _cannot_ hide your heartbeat from them?" he demanded. He turned back to the others. "Okay, yes, I agree. We have serious diversity issues to work through. But we can find _someone_ who's okay with dyadics to send into Two Together."

Kira shook her head. "That's not the problem." Malia gave her an _it's not?_ look. "It's _a_ problem, for sure, but it's not _the_ problem in this case. I know neither of you are prejudiced against dyadics. But if not hating us is your only criteria for who's going to pretend to _be_ us on an assignment, you've set your bar _way_ too low."

"That's what training is for," Stiles said, tugging his hair. "As in, _undercover_ training. As in, training we have that you don't."

Kira shook her head emphatically. "You can't train for this. It's too ingrained in you to behave, well, like a triadic. I mean, okay, _maybe_ you could get away with it, Stiles, because you and your guys are so disgustingly perfect together that you don't look at anyone else. But you, Jordan—"

"Oh, now I'm _looking_ at people wrong?" he sniped.

"You look at _everyone_ who crosses your path as a potential third."

Jordan's scowl deepened, but Stiles blew out a breath between his teeth and squeezed Jordan's arm. "She's got you there, dude." Jordan clenched his jaw and didn't answer.

"Dyadics get a lot of practice acting like triadics," Kira said, her voice quiet but harsh. She'd tried _so hard_ to convince herself that she wanted a triad, wanted the stability and comfort everyone claimed it gave. In the end, she hadn't been able to fake it. One triad after another had fallen apart around her, the only common denominators herself and her denial. "Trying to fit in, trying to convince ourselves we're like everyone else. But you don't get the same practice in the other direction." An uncomfortable silence fell. Malia laced her fingers with Kira's under the table.

"Damn," Stiles said, looking between the two of them. "I'm sorry, guys."

"Don't apologize," Malia snapped. "Fix it."

"I'm trying!" he insisted.

"By sending _triadics_ undercover in _dyadic_ organizations."

"Triadic _cops_!" Stiles insisted. He scrubbed his hand through his hair. "We can request a temporary assignment from Shasta County. They have a few dyadic deputies. We could even have someone come up from San Francisco. But that's going to take _time_ , and we don't know how much we have. The killer hasn't kept to any specific timetable, but there hasn't been more than a week between any of the killings, which means we have three days _at most_ before he kills again."

Kira could tell that Stiles was weakening and figured it couldn't hurt to twist the knife. "So, yeah," she said, swiping one of her now-cold fries through the puddle of ketchup on her plate. "If you want to call up someone from Shasta or San Fran, go ahead. That sounds like a smart thing to do. But if you want to catch this bastard before two more people get butchered, you could look closer to home." Kira basked in the quiet approval radiating off of Malia.

The guys stared at them for a minute, and then Stiles tossed his napkin on the table, as clear a demonstration of "throwing in the towel" as Kira had ever seen. "We'll have to clear it with the sheriff," he said, and Kira smiled, like always, at how formal Stiles was when he talked about his dad in a work context.

"Hey," Jordan said, "why didn't you suggest going to Mission Dolorosa?"

Kira rolled her eyes even as she silently bemoaned the crap job the American education system did at covering dyadic history. "Because _anyone_ who knows _anything_ about dyadic history knows that Mission Dolorosa was a dyadic senior housing complex where a group of residents attempted to resist police harassment in their own homes. Anything named after that place would be a seniors group."

The profound discomfort on Jordan's face, combined with the subtle way he was shifting in his chair, told Kira that he hadn't known that bit of history. He cleared his throat and said, "Two Together meets tomorrow night. Sheriff Stilinski would want you to spend the day going through accelerated training."

Kira grinned. "Great! I don't have classes on Tuesdays."

Beside her, Malia's grin was just as wide and twice as sharp. "Dad will give me the day off." Malia worked for Henry Tate and freely admitted that she was a _terrible_ employee.

Jordan and Stiles scowled through the rest of lunch, but they picked up the tab, calling their conversation "official police business." Let it never be said that Deputies Parrish and Stilinski couldn't be gracious in defeat.

* * *

Malia hadn't been sure at first, but she was getting into this undercover thing. She didn't even have to remember weird names, because she and Kira had gone in under their real names. It wasn't the kind of undercover assignment where they had to pretend to be someone else—just the kind where they had to pretend to care about dyadic organizations.

Of all the things about human life that confused Malia, the one she thought she would _never_ fully understand was how uptight they got about triads versus dyads. In the animal and supernatural worlds, everything was freer, adapting to what served a need. Only humans wanted everyone to be one thing or another, regardless of what any individual wanted or needed. She'd said as much on many occasions, to many people. One thing that made her love Kira best was that only Kira had sighed, kissed her temple, and said, "Yeah, we're pretty fucked up."

Two Together met in the basement of Redeemer Disciples of Christ Church in Beacon Valley. The church was a huge, sprawling monstrosity. They got lost twice on their path from the front door to the meeting room and bothered the same custodian twice before they stumbled into the meeting entirely by accident. A tall, broad woman with unnecessary amounts of floof and clank to her clothes walked up to them with a wide smile in place. "Hello, welcome!" she gushed, pressing her hands to Kira's without a word of warning. She tried to do the same to Malia, but Malia jerked her hand away and gave her a glare that might have shown more tooth than was smart. The woman yanked her hand back, startled, but put her smile quickly back in place. "Hello," she said again, less exuberantly. "You must be Kira and Malia." Once they'd confirmed that, and sorted out which of them was which, the woman said, "I'm Brenda. Welcome. Let me show you around."

"Show them around" was a strange phrase in a room this small. Malia could see all of it from the doorway. There was a long table covered in plates of store-bought cookies, pitchers of tap water, and a dull-looking coffee pot, but that was the only thing to "show" them. "I'll leave you to it," she said and flitted off again.

Even though the cookies looked like brightly colored cardboard and would probably taste the same, Malia and Kira busied themselves with filling little paper plates with cookies and little paper cups with water. They took their time about it, because Stiles, Jordan, and the sheriff, in the two-hour crash course they'd given Kira and Malia on undercover work (scowling heavily the whole time) had emphasized the importance of letting other people come to them. You could learn a lot about other people, and especially a _group_ of other people, by who approached you and how.

No one had approached them by the time they turned back toward the group with their snacks, but as soon as they turned, two women who looked fairly close to their age smiled and waved them over.

Kira and Malia settled into chairs beside the two, whose scents were so mingled they _had to_ be a couple. "Hey, I'm Nakeisha," one of them said. She reminded Malia a lot of Boyd—similar skin tone, height, and air of calm strength—except she smiled more.

The other woman was shaking hands with Kira. "And I'm Joelle," she said, and that eye-twinkling mischievous smile was Mason all over. Good grief, the trouble they two of them must get into.

"It's great to see new faces here," Nakeisha said, smiling warmly at them.

"Yeah!" Joelle agreed enthusiastically. "Now we aren't the new kids anymore."

Kira laughed and leaned against Malia. "I get it," Kira said. "I was the new kid in our group until we found Malia. Having her around was nice on a lot of levels."

Joelle had taken a breath to respond to that when a pinched look crossed her face. "Hi, Nate," she said, a great deal of displeasure in her voice.

"Hey, guys! Wow, the new people really stick together, huh?"

Malia looked up slowly. A smallish white guy with awful posture was standing at the edge of their circle between Joelle and Kira. His paper cup of coffee bore smudges from sweaty fingers. His name tag said "NATHANIEL" in dark, even capital letters and listed no pronouns.

The new arrival looked at Kira and Malia with a myopic stare that made the hairs on Malia's arm stand up. "I'm Nathaniel," he said, unnecessarily.

Malia couldn't decide if Kira was faking her enthusiasm or if she was just that big-hearted when she grinned and said, "Hi, I'm Kira. This is my girlfriend Malia."

Nathaniel's sour expression was glaringly obvious, as was the scent of disappointment that rolled off of him. "Oh," he said. "You're together?"

"Yup!" Kira said sunnily, grabbing Malia's hand and twining their fingers together. "Almost a year!"

"Hmmph," Nathaniel said, and, wow, he stuffed a lot of meaning into that noise. "And you... had an urge to join a dyadic group?" His eyebrows tilted down.

Malia showed a lot of teeth at him as she smiled. "She's always telling me I should spend more time around normal humans."

Kira's shocked laugh warmed Malia straight through, but she got a bigger thrill out of the dismay on Nathaniel's face. He recovered quickly, waving a hand. "We're hardly _normal_ ," he scoffed.

"Come on, we talked about this," Nakeisha chided gently. "There's nothing _wrong_ with us."

Malia looked between them, fascinated. She knew that most humans, at least in this country,  considered dyadics misled at best and diseased at worst, but she'd never known that any dyadics bought into that drivel. She took another, harder look at Nathaniel.

He shook his head sadly at Nakeisha. "It's great that you believe that, Nakeisha," he said, and Malia had to stop herself from holding him down in coyote form with her teeth at his throat until he stopped lying, "but I was raised to think differently about wobblies."

A collective gasp shot through the group. Even Malia pulled back. "Nathaniel," Joelle started, voice low and tense.

"Hey, everybody!" a new voice called. Malia couldn't decide if she was more relieved that someone had broken up the conversation before it got nastier  or disappointed that this bozo was going to shut up and slink away before he gave her a _real_ excuse to eviscerate him with her claws.

Malia glanced at two new people headed toward them. They pulled chairs over from another part of the circle and, with a lot of needless apologizing, fit themselves between Malia and Nakeisha. The one next to Malia stuck out a hand. "Hi, I'm Kelly." Not that she needed to tell Malia that; her stick-on name tag said, "Hi, I'm Kelly! she/her."

On her other side, the man Kelly came in with (Mike he/him, according to both his name tag and his pointless introduction) looked around the circle. "I hope we haven't interrupted anything," he said, looking pointedly at Nathaniel.

Joelle shook her head and turned away from Nathaniel. "A difference of opinion and some hurtful words."

Nakeisha opened her mouth and looked like she was going to be more blunt, but Joelle put a hand on her knee, and she subsided.

Kira smiled at Kelly and Mike across the circle. "Are you new, too?"

They glanced at each other, and their heartbeats spiked, but the smell coming off of them was excitement. "Sort of?" Kelly said. "We've been coming to meetings off an on for six months, but—"

"We're taking the plunge! We're becoming official members!"

Joelle and Nakeisha congratulated them. Kira smiled and said a more quiet congratulations, and Malia made a noise that must not have been insulting, because Kira didn't step on her foot. Malia was too busy watching Nathaniel to properly focus on human niceties.

Nathaniel _did not_ look happy for Mike and Kelly. Nathaniel, in fact, looked downright pissed. He gave the circle a tight smile and then said, with cheer so false it was deafening, "Oh, look, there's Brenda." He hared off across the room toward where the group organizer had, in fact, just come back into the room and closed the door behind her.

Kelly's eyes went wide as she watched him. "What was _that_ about?" she whispered.

Nakeisha shook her head. "Nathaniel being Nathaniel. You know." She lowered her voice and looked around furtively. "He used the w-word."

Mike's already pale face drained of color. It didn't look healthy. "He _what_?" he yelped.

"Mike, shh," Kelly admonished before looking back at the others. "He _didn't_."

Joelle nodded. "Fell right out of his mouth, cool as you please. Like he didn't even realize it was _bad_ to say that in a safe space."

Mike shook his head. "I still think the guy's a Coalition for Healthy Families plant," he muttered, which was just outrageous enough that most everyone laughed. It was a thin, nervous laugh, but it deflated the tension.

Malia did not laugh. Malia watched Nathaniel. And she thought.

"Nathaniel's the only single person we've met so far," Kira said, glancing around the room. "I didn't think this was a couple's group."

Joelle shrugged. "It's not, specifically. It's usually half and half." She grinned. "You know, there's couples who just want a place to be together without singles always hitting on them. But there's always single people using it as a meat market."

Nakeisha swatted her arm. "It's not a _meat market_ , Joelle, jeez," she said. "But it's nice to meet new people knowing that they're not looking to rope us into a triad."

Kelly had been looking around while Nakeisha spoke, and a faint frown crossed her face. "Although, now that I'm looking, I'm not seeing some of the usual couples."

Mike followed her gaze and frowned, too. "Yeah, where are Reuven and Lester?"

Malia swallowed hard and glanced over at Kira, who was pointedly not looking back. _Shit_. She hadn't considered the possibility that these people didn't know yet.

Nakeisha shrugged. "Well, they'd been coming for a long time, but I think they'd just formally joined a while ago. Maybe they changed their minds, decided full membership wasn't for them after all."

From her peripheral vision, Malia noticed Kira's eyebrows go up. Malia agreed. That could be useful information for Stiles and Jordan's investigation. And if they were useful to the cops, Kira would let them drop this ridiculous undercover assignment

*

"So? What did you think?" Brenda asked as she came up to them after the meeting

Kira smiled sunnily. Malia lost the thread of the conversation. Kira had a lot of different smiles. Each one fascinated Malia, and almost all of them made her feel warm and glowy inside.

Brenda sighed, and her expression turned stormy. "Our meetings are usually more upbeat," she said. "I hope this will be the only time I have to announce that two of our members have been _murdered_ since the last time we met."

Kira's smile softened, and Malia got lost for a minute in its bright, graceful curve. This smile of Kira's ranked in Malia's top ten. It was the one that said she was, overall, pleased with the world and her place in it, though still the right amount of saddened by its injustices. Malia tuned back into the conversation in time to hear Kira say "—definitely coming back."

"Thinking about joining?" Brenda asked.

Malia's eyes widened, and she tried to subtly shake her head no without Brenda noticing. Kira shrugged, and Malia's shoulders loosened as she reminded herself that Brenda didn't know they were undercover. Brenda thought they were an ordinary dyadic couple looking for a place to belong.

Malia supposed that, in a way, that was true for Kira. Malia had lived in isolation for so many years, spending all her time shifted, interacting with humans only when she absolutely couldn't avoid it—usually by growling and snapping her teeth at the ankles of the unwary. Now she had the pack, and they were her family. They had welcomed her and marked her with their scent. There were no other coyotes, but plenty of other shifters. Some of them were actual blood relatives. Malia doubted she could find a better group of people to say she belonged to, and she didn't care to look.

Kira had a harder time of it. No one else in the pack was of her culture or her type of supernatural creature. If Kira needed a place to belong, Malia would support her however she could.

She just hoped Kira wouldn't decide to belong someplace where people were being murdered.

* * *

"Todd Standish," Parrish said. "He on any of those lists?" He waved a hand in the general direction of the dyad groups' membership lists.

Stiles frowned and tilted his head at the papers. "No, but I know the name—hang on." He rifled through the case file, and he could feel the faint scowl between his eyebrows. He cleared it away as best he could and kept searching until he found what he'd half-remembered at Parrish's question. "Here it is. Todd Standish. Forty-eight, lives in Crestview. A couple vandalism arrests when he was 18 and 19; nothing but minor vehicle infractions since. He's on the cleaning staff at the church where Two Together meets."

"Oh, _really_?" Parrish's eyebrow tilted up, and Stiles' heart sang with anticipation. Where that look went, a eureka moment was sure to follow. "Todd Standish is _also_ a member of the cleaning staff at the Ives Building, where victim number four, Willa Bartz, worked. No solid alibi for any of the relevant times."

It was awful to grin when eight people had been murdered. But Stiles couldn't help feeling hopeful about the first glimmer of a real lead they'd had since Brenda Humboldt recognized two victims' names. He stood and headed for the coat rack at the front of the bullpen. "Then let's go have a talk with Mr. Standish."

Of course it only worked that easily in TV shows and novels. Stiles and Parrish spent over an hour, nearly 25 miles of driving, the three grudging conversations trying to figure out where they could find Todd Standish at 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon.

When they figured it out, Stiles shut down tight, lips pursed and brow furrowed. He went immediately into problem-solving mode. "All right," he told Parrish as they climbed back into the cruiser, "You interview Standish. I'll distract Derek so he can't hear you interviewing Standish."

Parrish shook his head in bewilderment. "You'll have to tell him eventually."

"I will," Stiles said earnestly. "When we have a killer locked up and a solid case that will put them in prison for the rest of their life. Then I will definitely tell Derek about it."

" _Stiles_ ," Parrish groaned.

"Just drive, Parrish," Stiles said, quietly but with steel in his tone.

Parrish and the sheriff had made their views clear. "Don't hide things from Derek, Stiles." "He deserves to hear it from you and not the press, Stiles." "Honesty and clear communication are the cornerstones of a healthy relationship, Stiles."  

But they didn't _know_ , okay? Not like he and Danny did. They didn't know that Cora had chosen not to tell Derek she was pregnant until after they'd passed the nine-week miscarriage danger zone. They'd apparently forgotten that, after Quincy was born, Derek spent so much time outside the nursery that the maternity nurses thought _he_ was the anxious father. They didn't know how many conversations Derek, Stiles, and Danny had had about surrogacy, and about how important it was to him that at least one of their eventual, hypothetical children carry Hale DNA.

"In the entire _world_ ," Stiles said softly, "Derek has _three_ blood relatives who are closer than, I think, third cousins twice removed. If I told him that a serial killer was targeting a group of people that included one of those relatives, he would shove Malia into a chair and _sit on her_ until we caught the killer. He would also probably worry himself into an ulcer in the process." Stiles shook his head. "If he finds out, he finds out. But it won't be from me."

* * *

Derek heard the hum of Stiles and Jordan's cruiser two minutes before anyone else in the studio. It had an overtightened belt that made the engine vibrate at a different frequency than other BCSD vehicles. He calmly kept pouring, despite the way his heart hammered in his chest. Molten metal waited for no one and demanded a high degree of attention, boyfriend and good friend arriving at your building or no.

He wasn't surprised by alarmed shouts of "Holy fuck, it's the fuzz!" and "Shit! Hide the shit!" popping out around the building, followed by frantic scurrying. Nine artists working out of an abandoned barn at the edge of town, mostly creating giant metal and glass sculptures, probably had who knew what kind of drugs and paraphernalia lurking around.

Derek could've gone out and told them not to worry about these particular cops. He could've said that one of them regularly wandered around the house in Adventure Time boxers, when he bothered with clothes at all. That the other had once literally burst into flames of distress over a box of puppies abandoned on the side of the road. Stiles and Jordan would still arrest the fuck out of anyone they needed to, but a couple bongs and rolling papers lying around wouldn't garner much interest from them.

Jordan and Stiles parked and came into the building, introducing themselves to whoever had come to the door and asking for Standish. Derek was way too good at what he did for his hands to fumble.

Derek had hired Standish, a grizzled old dude who reminded him of Great Grandpa Hale, last year in a fit of frustration that, among the _nine_ people who had studio space in this building, _no one_ could keep the kitchenette and bathrooms clean. Standish came in twice a month, and Derek assumed he had other jobs. But he had no idea what those jobs were or what Standish did with the rest of his time. Frankly, he didn't care.

Apparently Stiles and Jordan did care. The door to the empty studio next door opened, two sets of footsteps—Standish and Jordan—came into the room, and the door closed again.

"I don't have to answer your questions without a lawyer," Standish spat. Derek wondered if Jordan realized he was _right next door_ to Derek, who could hear the conversation as clearly as if he were in the room with them.

Jordan's voice was perfectly pleasant as he said, "That's true, you don't. Would you like to call one?"

Derek appreciated a lot of things about Jordan, as a person and a cop. One of the best was that he never pulled that "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't need a lawyer" bullshit. That didn't mean, unfortunately, that he was above manipulation. "While we wait for your lawyer," he said, "mind if I look around your work space? I have a court order, if you'd like to see it. It's part of a routine inquiry." While Derek couldn't hear Jordan's heartbeat clearly, his tone seemed even. "I just need you to take a look at some names and photos and see if you recognize any of them."

A long silence ended with an irate, "Fine, give them here."

"I understand you're also part of the custodial staff at Redeemer Disciples of Christ Church in Beacon Heights," Jordan said.

It sounded conversational, idle chitchat while Standish focused on the important matter of the names and faces. But Jordan was pack. Sometimes, if something intense happened with his emotions, Derek could sense them even when wasn't physically present to observe the signs. Derek felt a visceral _tug_ behind his navel and knew that this question mattered as much as whatever he'd put in front of Standish.

Before Derek had a chance to contemplate that, the door to his workspace banged open. He looked over, startled—and embarrassed about being startled.

But, even without distractions, Stiles had long been an exception to every rule Derek thought applied to him. Danny was Derek's anchor, had been for years. He was the steady, immovable force that helped Derek remember and maintain his humanity, the calm certainty that focused him, no matter what godawful bullshit life threw at him. Stiles, to pull out obscure werewolf terminology his grandmother had taught him a lifetime ago, was Derek's spur, the one who got under his skin and pushed him to _do_ more, _be_ more, the itch he could never fully scratch.

The instant Stiles was through the door, Derek's feet and hands started to tingle, and his breath grew faster and shallower. He took a half-step forward and stopped, hands clenched at his sides. "Deputy," he said, voice even and affectless.

Stiles knew anyway. Stiles always knew. His smirk widened as he swaggered across the space to stand in front of Derek. "Mr. Hale," he said, his usual uber-professional work voice pitched a half-octave lower, a dizzying mix of crispness and heat. "I understand you own this building."

Derek swallowed. Was it hot in here? Of course it was. Derek watched sweat bead along Stiles' hairline and physically held himself back from darting forward to lick it. "That's right."

"And you hired Todd Standish?"

Derek blinked. "What's your interest in him?" He tried to make it a demand, but there was too much breath, too much shaking _want_ , for that to work.

Stiles leaned closer. He put his hands on the table at Derek's back, penning him in. "Answer the question, Mr. Hale."

Derek shook his head, clearing the fog of lust. "Stiles," he said gently, "this is getting weird."

Stiles blinked, looked at their relative positions, and blushed. "Sorry, right. Sorry!" He straightened and took two good-sized steps out of Derek's space.

Stiles did _not_ abuse his authority. He'd followed in his father's footsteps to _help_ people, not because he liked having power over them. But sometimes he forgot that his job wasn't _just_ a job, that putting on his BCSD uniform was very different from putting on a tie and going to the office or putting on a tank top and going to the studio.

Stiles ran a hand through his hair and grimaced when his palm came away sweaty. "What can you tell me about Todd Standish?"

Derek shrugged and leaned against the table, crossing his arms. "He's a good guy. Quiet, grumpy." The corner of Stiles' mouth ticked up; Derek felt his own answering smile as he continued, "He shows up on time, works efficiently, leaves us alone."

Stiles nodded. He'd pulled out his phone and stylus while Derek talked and was scribbling notes. "Do you know anything about him outside of work? Family, hobbies, politics?"

Derek shrugged. "I think he divorced out. Got a kid, maybe. Moms have custody."

Stiles' eyebrow twitched. Derek knew he was trying to keep his expression blank and his emotions banked, but Derek read him better than he read almost anyone else. Derek had no idea why Standish's family arrangements interested Stiles, but they definitely did.

Derek wasn't sure if Stiles thought his glances toward the next room were subtle, or if he even knew he was making them. Derek stifled a smile and leaned into Stiles' space. Stiles' breath hitched on the inhale, and he swayed back, his scent spiking with affection and lust. "I know you want to be out there," Derek murmured, "investigating and interviewing. You don't want to be babysitting me."

"I'm not stuck," Stiles protested. His hand landed on Derek's arm above the elbow. Warmth spread through Derek's body from the point of contact as Stiles swept his thumb back and forth. "I volunteered to talk to you, because I pretty much _always_ want to talk to you."

Derek smiled and rested his hand at the curve of Stiles' jaw below his ear. "Maybe that's true. But right now I know you're here to distract me."

Stiles looked at him from under lowered lashes, and his lips turned up at the corners in a coy smile. "Distracting you is one of my favorite pastimes."

"Stiles," Derek said. His voice held a warning note, but he'd be hard-pressed to say _what_ he was warning Stiles about—was he saying to stop or to _not_ stop?

Stiles slid forward a half step. He was on the clock, actively working on an investigation. But Derek was only so strong, and if Stiles was going to pretend that this breach of protocol didn't matter, then Derek would happily play along.

Derek ran the tip of his nose up Stiles' neck, from the junction of his shoulder to his earlobe, drawing in the achingly familiar scent of him. He placed a kiss behind Stiles' ear, enjoying the quavering gasp that got him. "On your knees, Deputy," he growled in Stiles' ear.

Stiles whined high in his throat, and Derek was glad this part of the room was covered with anti-fatigue mats, because Stiles didn't check the floor before he dropped where he stood. On his knees in full uniform, face level with Derek's rapidly hardening cock and looking like _nothing_ in life mattered more than getting his mouth on it.

Derek swallowed. This was his last chance to take it back. He could—he _should_ —take Stiles by the elbow and draw him to his feet. But while Derek was a _better_ person than he'd been when he'd first met Stiles and Danny, no one would argue that he was a _good_ person. "Stiles," he groaned halfheartedly, to give Stiles one more chance to come to his senses on his own.

Stiles instead took it as consent and invitation and reached forward with eager hands for Derek’s pants. Derek groaned and surrendered, reaching back to brace himself on the table.

Stiles' mouth, even after four years, was like a damned revelation every time. The few times Derek felt stable enough, he freed a hand from its tight grip on the table and ran his fingers through Stiles' hair to hear and feel the low, pleased hum he made and feel him lean into the touch. But those were rare moments, because mostly Derek had to hang on tight to keep himself upright as Stiles worked him over with his mind-blowingly talented mouth. When Derek came down Stiles' throat, he shoved his hand into his mouth to stifle his cries. Stiles smirked up at him the whole damned time he swallowed and licked Derek's oversensitive cock clean.

Derek leaned against the table as his breathing evened out, letting Stiles get to his feet and adjust himself in his uniform pants. Derek reached toward Stiles' belt, but Stiles smiled, caught his hand, and moved it to the side. "I could return the favor," Derek said, and after years of therapy and years with Danny and Stiles, he was finally over being embarrassed by how dopey and besotted he sounded after sex.

Stiles' smile turned warm and fond. He leaned forward and caught Derek's mouth in a kiss, deep but gentle, letting Derek slip his tongue inside and taste himself in Stiles' mouth. "You're sweet to offer," Stiles whispered, "but I can't while I'm working."

Derek didn't laugh, despite the absurdity of Stiles being okay with sucking Derek off in the middle of an investigation but not with getting off in return. He nodded, kissed Stiles again, and pulled out the pack of gum Stiles always kept in his shirt pocket.

Stiles grinned saucily and took the pack, unwrapping a piece of gum and popping it into his mouth far more salaciously than should've been possible. It was _gum_. How did anyone do _that_ salaciously?

"You are a unique and beautiful snowflake," Derek deadpanned and basked in Stiles' delighted laughter.

"I should go," Stiles said reluctantly. "Parrish is probably wrapping up with Standish, and we've got other interviews to conduct."

Derek tilted his head toward the room where Jordan was interviewing Standish. They were, indeed, wrapping up, Jordan discouraging Standish from leaving the county, Standish snarling and calling Jordan a tool of racist imperialism. "Yeah," Derek said mildly, "he's about done." He crossed his arms and looked at Stiles. "For what it's worth, I don't see Standish as the serial killer type. He doesn't _care_ enough about anything."

Stiles sputtered. "I—I don't know what—what are you—"

"Stiles." Derek let his arms drop and stepped forward, taking Stiles' hands in his. "It's okay. News travels fast. I was bound to hear it sooner or later, no matter how hard you've tried to keep it from me." He smiled faintly. "Not that I'm sure _why_ you're keeping it from me."

Stiles squeezed Derek's hands and then pulled his own away. One rubbed his face wearily. The other reached toward a folder that Derek had seen him put on the table by the door when he came in. He waved it but made no move to open it. "Four incidents, eight victims. Last one happened last night." His voice sounded thin and strained. Derek vaguely remembered Stiles grabbing his phone, swearing under his breath, and disappearing from the bed somewhere around six this morning. Derek and Danny were going to do a lot of damage-control cuddling when this case was over. "All the vics are dyadic couples."

Stiles grimaced, so the look on Derek's face must've been awful. "Malia," Derek whispered.

Stiles nodded, his expression mournful. "Yeah. Malia." He put the folder down and reached out to take Derek's hands again. Derek let him, and it was longer clear who was comforting whom. Or if it mattered. "We knew you _could_ handle it; we just—"

"What else?"

Stiles blinked. "What do you—"

"We've dealt with hunters and cult leaders and that näck that had it out for the whole Hale line. You've never hidden it from me because one of my relatives was in danger. What _else_ is going on?"

Stiles' bright eyes searched Derek's face, his expression akin to wonder. "I can't hate that you're so perceptive," he said wryly. "It _was_ just because of Malia. But now there's another aspect, and I can't tell you—I _can't_ , Derek," he said, firmer, when Derek opened his mouth to protest. "But I promise you that Parrish, the Sheriff, and I are managing that aspect. It's just... we have a lot of shaky leads, but nothing that feels right, even before we go interview people who obviously haven't killed _anyone_. And this is a 100 percent human killing; no supernatural aspect anywhere, so you can't do anything to help with that. This one has to be old-fashioned police work, and I've almost forgotten what it's like to hunt down a killer without unearthing some bizarre supernatural clue."

Derek ran his thumb over the back of Stiles' hand, back and forth, even tempo. He watched tension uncoiling from Stiles' shoulders, and the crushing grip on his hands relaxed. He stared at Stiles until Stiles looked back. "Stiles. You'll find this bastard. You always do."

Stiles nodded, but Derek still saw shadows in his eyes. "I know we will," he said. It wasn't arrogance, just confidence and experience. "But I don't know if we'll find him in time."

* * *

Once they were out of earshot of the barn, Parrish shook his head and said, "Possible but unlikely. Standish was on that crew because he's good at cleaning. Bathrooms are his specialty, apparently. He said he had no idea what groups met in the church or who worked at the Ives Building, and I'm inclined to believe him." He sighed. "Back to square one."

Stiles' phone beeped with an incoming text alert, and he couldn't help the smile that stole over his face as he read it. "Not necessarily," he said. "Text from Kira, telling us to look into Nathaniel Laredo."

"Laredo," Parrish repeated, frowning. "They mentioned him during the debrief. One of those awkward guys who tries to make himself part of everything, whether you want him there or not."

Stiles nodded. "Kira's seen him at two different places she's been today. Could be coincidence."

"Doesn't Laredo live out in Long Grove?"

Stiles looked at him in surprise. "I have _no_ idea how you remember these things."

Parrish rolled his eyes as he got into the car. "Like your memory isn't a steel trap."

"Hmm." Stiles wasn't convinced. "This is some freaky supernatural power of yours? Hellhounds never forget?"

" _Please_." Parrish said forcefully. "You've seen a dog walk from one room to another and forget why they came in there? That's me. Times fifty. Plus flames."

Stiles dissolved laughing and had to lean against the door for a minute before he could put on his seatbelt. "Man, I bet Lydia _loves_ that." He was still wiping the corners of his eyes when Parrish started the car. When Parrish didn't reply with so much as a grunt, Stiles glanced over, his laughter evaporating as he took in the slump of Parrish 's shoulder and the tightness of his eyes and mouth. "Oh," Stiles said. "Sore spot, huh?"

"We—she—" Parrish lifted his hands off the wheel and made a helpless, meaningless gesture that somehow managed to mean everything. "Now she won't even go on the dates if she doesn't like them on paper. And she _doesn't_ like them on paper. Too ambitious. Not ambitious enough. Overeducated. Undereducated. Too many hobbies. Too few hobbies. It's like she's going out of her way to reject them before we give them a chance."

"I'm sorry, Parrish," Stiles said sincerely, "but your timing is _shit_. Lydia is in _no_ position to integrate a third right now, let alone a baby. She _has to_ focus on her work. In two or three years, it'll be a different story, and she might have a different attitude."

"But—"

"I know you're pining for pups," he said sharply. "But you _have to_ consider this from Lydia's side if you want your relationship to make it. She doesn't want to be 'that woman' who had kids because society expected her to and then had to choose between a family she barely wanted and a career she'd been chasing literally since the day she discovered math _existed_."

"Damn it." Parrish pushed the heel of one hands against his eye. "I'm being a dick, aren't I?"

Stiles shrugged. "Yeah? I mean, you feel what you feel. That's valid. And if this one's a deal-breaker for you, then that's what it is. Just know that you may have to do it without Lydia."

Parrish stared out the windshield of the cruiser, but his eyes were unfocused and his breathing ragged. Stiles smiled sympathetically and patted his back. "I get it, buddy. Relationships are _tough._ Let's go catch a serial killer!"

Parrish groaned and put the car in reverse. "What does it say about my life that that sounds _easier_ than fixing my relationship?"

Stiles laughed and shook his head. "Welcome to adulting, man."

* * *

Danny cheered when the back door opened and he heard Stiles stomping around the kitchen. "This list is the worst!" he called. He tossed his glasses onto the table and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Stiles. Your list is the worst." He froze as the library door swung open, revealing both Stiles and Derek. "Um."

Stiles had a bowl of Cheetos in his hand, because when he had a bad day, he reverted to high school eating habits. Danny wouldn't complain as long as he didn't touch anything that stained easily. "It's okay," Stiles said, waving a weary hand at Derek. "He was on to us anyway. Now he knows the basics."

Without a word, Derek crossed to Danny's desk. He pressed a kiss to the top of Danny's head and let his hands hover over Danny's shoulder in a silent question.

Danny answered by shoving his shoulders up into Derek's hands, like a cat butting its head against a hand to be petted. Derek gave a pleased hum and started kneading Danny's shoulders with big, strong, deft fingers. Danny's groan felt drawn from the very core of his being. He gave himself over to Derek's care, body shifting with the motion of Derek's hands, tension being pulled out of him in firm strokes.

Stiles chuckled as he followed slowly in Derek's wake, hopping onto the corner of the desk and watching the process with undisguised affection. "That's not regulation work policy for BCSD contractors," he said sternly, but he put the lie to his reproof by catching Danny's calf between his socked feet.

Danny reached down, ignoring Derek's disapproving huff, and swept Stiles' feet into his lap. He took the right in both hands and massaged the ball. Stiles gave an obscene moan, and Danny grinned as he worked toward the heel.

Stiles sagged, planting his hands behind him on the desk for support. "Christ," he groaned, "look at you two. You don't even know how—" He shook his head and pouted at Derek. "I feel like a slacker here, but I can't reach you."

Even Danny's human senses felt something pleased and smug radiating off Derek as he said, "No worries. You got me earlier."

Danny's eyebrows jumped a bit, and then a lot more when Stiles turned a deep, dark shade of red and tried to jerk his feet out of Danny's lap. Danny laughed and didn't let go.

Stiles cleared his throat and picked up the member list in front of Danny, for the absurdly named Never Fall Down. A tiny frown line appeared between his eyes, and Danny wanted to smooth it away with his thumb and place a gentle kiss to the spot. Instead he stayed where he was, trying to think while Derek's hands slowly turned him into a puddle of goo. Stiles shook his head and put the paper down. He reached toward Danny's folder of member lists and flipped through them quickly before pulling out the ones labeled "Two Together" and "Mission Dolorosa." "Focus on these two," he said. "So far, they're our only verifiable link between any of the eight vics."

The bottom dropped out of Danny's stomach. " _Eight_?" Derek gave Danny's shoulders a gentle, reassuring squeeze and then just rested his hands there, the warmth and solidity of him keeping Danny grounded.

Stiles paled. "Yeah, sorry, I—I thought Parrish or the sheriff had let you know. The call I got this morning? Two more victims found." He pointed at the Two Together list. "Kelly Evans and Mike Krushensky."

Danny scanned the list until he found the names and drew a dashed line around them. He still had to look into them, in case something about their lives gave the cops a clue about their deaths. But since they weren't the killers, and other officers were undoubtedly investigating their lives, they went to the bottom of his list, alongside the three other murdered couples. No wonder Stiles looked so exhausted.

Stiles was still frowning at the list in Danny's hand, so Danny wasn't surprised when he reached for it again. Danny handed it over, and Stiles set it on the desk before pulling his small notebook out of his shirt pocket. He flipped through it and then double-checked it against the list. He put the notebook away and held the list out to Danny, his finger pointing toward the bottom of the third page. "Nathaniel Laredo," he said, and sure enough, Danny spotted the name near Stiles' fingernail. "M—our undercover agents said he set off alarm bells. Maybe look into him first."

"I'm not sure I'm supposed to know that," Derek said, his tone mild. He slid his hands off Danny's shoulders and settled in Stiles' desk chair.

Stiles shrugged. "You're not. But it's a non-supernatural case. I trust you not to do anything untoward."

Derek snorted, whether at Stiles' attitude or his assessment, Danny wasn't sure.

Danny was already on the hunt for Nathaniel Laredo's pertinents. "What's this guy's story?"

Stiles shook his head. "No story yet. But our undercover agents said he set off their Spidey senses, so Parrish and I figure it's worth looking into."

Danny hummed and sank deeper into the rhythm of the hunt. He was vaguely aware of Stiles pulling his feet out of Danny's lap and sliding seductively—well, _attempting_ to slide seductively—out of his uniform shirt and slinking over to where Derek was slouched in his chair, but he could work through that. The chair creaked a bit as, Danny assumed, Stiles settled in Derek's lap. But when the soft sucking sounds of an early-stage make-out session drifted across the room, Danny picked up the closest empty Mountain Dew can and chucked it backward in their general direction. He didn't hear it hit the ground, so Derek must've caught it.

"Some of us are trying to work," Danny said, eyes fixed in his screen. "On something _you_ asked for."

"You could take a break?" Stiles offered with a hopeful lilt to his voice. Derek snickered.

"I just started!" Danny said, exasperated.

The chair creaked again as Derek got to his feet, pulling Stiles up with him. "Come on, Stiles. Let him work." He lowered his voice and added, "I know how to distract you."

"Yeah?" Stiles asked, breathy with anticipation.

"Yeah. Liam, Mason, and Hayden stopped by earlier. They brought… snickerdoodles."

The sound of delighted cackling lit Danny from the inside as Derek carried Stiles out of the room.

*

Stiles hated admitting when he was wrong. But he was wrong. Kira and Malia were pulling in information from Two Together left, right, and center. Granted, he wasn't sure how much of it was _useful_ —who used to date whom; who'd left a perfectly stable-seeming triad to become part of a dyad; who'd fallen in the river during last summer's tubing expedition. The point was that the group's other members told Malia and Kira things because they _trusted_ them.

Meanwhile,  efforts at Mission Dolorosa were proceeding abysmally. Rita and Lynn, the two former deputies the sheriff had sweet-talked into coming out of retirement for the assignment, were bright-eyed grandmother types who usually inspired great confidences. But at Mission Dolorosa, people weren't even giving Rita and Lynn their real names. Like Kira had warned them, a pair of triadics couldn't fake being dyadic. The sheriff had his finger on the button to abort their assignment at the first hint of trouble.

Stiles was on his way back to his desk from Records. Danny's poking into Nathaniel Laredo had turned up a no-contact order taken out against him seven years prior, and Stiles was _very_ interested in the details. He'd almost managed to get across the bullpen when he heard, "Are you fucking kidding me with this shit, Haigh?"

Stiles sighed and changed course. Alex Haigh and Valerie Clark had been partnered for almost two years, and they'd spent the bulk of that time unsuccessfully petitioning Sheriff Stilinski to reassign them. Stiles just wanted to read the information about the no-contact order and go home. But if he wanted to avoid bloodshed—or, more to the point, if he wanted to avoid the sheriff looking disappointed while he asked why no one had prevented bloodshed—he would have to at least be open to the possibility of intervening.

Stiles wasn't surprised that Clark and Haigh had attracted a crowd, but he _was_ surprised that everyone else appeared, so far, to be keeping their opinions to themselves. As Stiles threaded through the knot of people surrounding Clark's and Haigh's desks, he got a vague sense of who was on whose side by whether they were projecting anger (Clark) or smug superiority (Haigh, completely unjustified, in Stiles' opinion).

Then Haigh had to go and open his damned mouth again. "I'm just saying, they're not _normal_ , and if this guy wants to do us a favor—"

"Shut your mouth before I shut it for you, Haigh!" A lot of startled heads whipped around, and Stiles sighed at himself.  That was a new world record for snapping at Haigh's shit.

Haigh turned with a sneer. "What do _you_ care, Stilinski? Got your two hunks of man-meat keeping you warm. What do you care about a couple dead dyads?"

"Well, _first_ of all," Stiles snarled, seeing red, "I care for the same reason you ought to: it's our _job_. Unless you're telling me that the cold-blooded _murder_ of _eight people_ in our jurisdiction doesn't demand our attention?"

Haigh, never the brightest crayon in the shed, _shrugged_. "I _guess_ we can't have a murderer running loose. He might get bored and start coming after normal people."

"Dyadics _are_ normal people, you out-of-tune asstuba!" Clark was back in it now. Her bottle of White Out clipped Haigh hard in the head. A murmur of approval went through their rapidly growing crowd, for both her opinion and her aim.

"They are _not_!" Haigh looked horrified that she would even suggest it. "It's not _right_."

"Spare me your sermons, Alex, _please_ ," Clark begged with the air of someone who'd had to sit through this speech a dozen times before.

"Look, it's not theology—though the Bible's _very_ clear about dyadic—"

"Separation of church and state, dickweed," Stiles snapped. "Look it up."

"It's fundamental biology, okay?" Haigh continued like Stiles hadn't spoken. "Human beings weren't _meant_ to be only two. It grates at our nature. Feels unfinished."

"The Mormons would be surprised to hear that," Clark said dryly. "And pretty much the entirety of Asia."

"Well, I mean." Haigh spread his hands. After a beat Stiles realized that, for Haigh, "Mormons" and "Asia" proved _his_ point, not Clark's.

"Look, you defective pencil sharpener," Clark said, venom dripping from every syllable, "bifidelity is a social construct, _not_ a biological imperative."

"Oh, here we go." Haigh rolled his eyes so hard _Stiles_ hurt just watching him. "More of your oppressive hegewhatsit liberal artsy-fartsy _bullshit_."

"Are you honestly going to sit here and tell us that dyadics _aren't_ oppressed?" Stiles demanded. He was hovering right Haigh's desk now, nostrils flared, fists clenched.

Haigh reared up out of his seat. " _They deserve it_!"

"They're getting _killed_ , Haigh!"

" _They're fucking wobblies_!"

" _HEY_!"

Dead silence followed, ringing loud in Stiles' ears in the wake of the disturbance. A lot of embarrassed shuffling ensued, and a sizeable chunk of the audience tried to fade unobtrusively into the background. Whatever their personal stance in the debate, _everyone_ knew it was in their best interest not to be standing close to someone who'd just thrown out one of the worst slurs the English language had on offer when the sheriff was on the march.

" _Nobody_ move!" Sheriff Stilinski snapped, his finger pointing unerringly at the people who were trying to slip away. "Everyone needs to hear this. First and foremost, and I am _deeply_ disappointed that I have to say this in 2021, the Beacon County Sheriff's Department _does not tolerate_ hate speech. No slurs, no 'jokes,' and, Jesus Christ, _no_ suggesting that a murder victim _deserved it_.

"Secondly, some of you are religious. I support that, and I'm glad you have that in your life. But we are the _government_ , and you will leave your theological debates outside."

"I said it _wasn't_ —" Haigh began, clearly liking the hole he was in so much he wanted it deeper.

"Haigh!" Sheriff Stilinski barked, "you'll want to do some _very deep_ soul-searching before opening your mouth again today." Haigh snapped his mouth shut and settled for glaring mutinously at the sheriff. "Do I look like I was born yesterday? In a bubble? I know a dog-whistle when I hear one." He looked at his assembled force, the ones who'd drifted away as well as the ones caught awkwardly between staying and going. "Stilinski, Clark, congratulations. You've proven that you stayed awake during the last Diversity and Respect training. The rest of you—an email will come around by the end of the week about your new round of training. It'll say 'You're invited,' but don't be fooled. It's _not_ an invitation. Haigh, you're with me."

"Mandatory for _all_ of us?" Parrish demanded from the edge of the circle, a petulant note in his voice. He waved the newspaper in his hand, probably today's copy of the _Leader._ "I didn't say anything!"

Sheriff Stilinski clapped his shoulder genially, but _hard_ , as he walked past. "Deputy Parrish," he said, "that's exactly my point."

After he'd sat and stewed for a minute, Stiles remembered the newspaper Parrish had been holding. He lifted his head to look for Parrish and wasn't surprised to find his partner looking back. "Hey," Stiles said. "The _Leader_?"

Parrish scowled at it. "I've only read as far as the headline, and I already feel like going to their office and ripping somebody a new one."

The _Leader_ still stubbornly published, on paper, seven days a week, despite hemorrhaging money and talent at fatal rates. Yet they were attempting to attract internet-level readership by using the worst attributes of online "journalism," including ramped-up sensationalism and clickbait headlines. The one in front of him screamed, "BCSD BUNGLES INVESTIGATION OF MULTIPLE-DYAD SERIAL KILLING." Stiles winced.

"Pretty much par for the course, but..." Parrish shook his head.

"It doesn't make sense," Stiles complained. "'Multiple-dyad serial killing'? What does that _mean_?"

Parrish shrugged one shoulder. "Search me. Doesn't matter. All the relevant words are in there. 'Bungled,' for instance. That's an important one."

Stiles was startled but not surprised when Parrish sat for another second, thinking, and then jumped out of his chair, all restless energy in need of an outlet. "Come on," he said, slapping Stiles' shoulder. He reached into to his bottom desk drawer and pulled out his baseball and pair of  catcher's mitts.

" _Parrish_ ," Stiles groaned, but he was getting up and grabbing his jacket and sunglasses.

"Come on, fresh air'll do us good."

"This is some serious _Twilight_ shit right here, you know that?"

Parrish narrowed his eyes and patted his sidearm. "If I see a sparkly vampire, I _will_ shoot on sight."

The day was beautiful, if chilly, the kind that couldn't decide if it wanted to be winter or spring. They tossed a baseball back and forth and focused on the simple physicality of it—a cool breeze, weak sunlight struggling through wispy cloud cover, the thwack of leather against leather as the ball zipped between them. They were still alive, still fighting. They _would_ find who'd done this.

Stiles was starting to feel like it was time to go back inside when Parrish grimaced and missed a fairly gentle throw. Stiles went on alert. "What? What is it?" It hadn't been an epiphany about a case; they'd worked together long enough for Stiles to recognize that face when Parrish made it.

Parrish glanced around to make sure they were alone and then said, "Pack dinner tonight."

Stiles groaned. He hadn't considered that he, Parrish, and the sheriff were going to have to sit in a room with as many as 17 other packmembers and answer their pointed questions about the case.

Parrish pulled off his glove and jerked his head toward the door. "Let's get back to work for a while. We'll put our heads together over lunch and figure out what we can and can't tell them."

Stiles clapped his shoulder as they went back into the building. "You know," he said, "sixteen-year-old me would _die_ if he knew he'd be saying this someday, but I'm glad _you_ ended up with Lydia."

Parrish hip-checked him so hard he staggered out of the doorway. "Not cool, Fido!" he yelled through his laughter. Parrish shut the door in his face. Yeah, they'd be okay.

* * *

Just before four, the pack started arriving for weekly dinner—chaos night, Stiles called it, and he wasn't far wrong. Mason, Liam, and Hayden showed up first, straight from Mason's 2:30 class at Beacon College. They sprawled around the living room, bitching about homework more than _doing_ it.

Melissa's shift had ended at three, and she'd gone home and tapped her foot at Chris until he put away his ammo catalogue and got in the car (Danny had seen her do this to both Chris and John a hundred times, and it never stopped being _awesome_ ). "John got called out to an accident," Melissa said. She held up her hand when Mason looked like he was about to say something. "That's not his usual thing, but I think he wanted something to deal with something straightforward for a while."

Scott, Allison, and Isaac rolled in around five, and after waving at the assembled masses, Isaac vanished into the kitchen to help Derek cook. Danny frowned at his retreating back. "Bad day?"

Allison sighed and flopped into the empty arm chair next to him. Scott had sprawled with the others on the floor, scent-marking the crap out of Liam and Hayden and offering to help Hayden with her Bio 301 course, like she wasn't flying through it while he'd barely scraped by. But she smiled and thanked him, and rubbed his arm, because he was a good alpha, even if he'd only been a so-so student.

Allison glanced toward the kitchen, which was suddenly ten times louder, full of clanging pots and rattling cupboards. "He won't say," she said softly. "He got a letter from the lawyer who handled his father's estate, so I'm guessing it has something to do with that."

Danny's eyebrows drew down. "His dad died eight years ago. What's left?"

Allison shrugged, her eyes full of angry helplessness. "I don't know," she admitted, "but some days it seems like Roger owed money to literally ever shady character and unscrupulous lending company in this state. It's been popping up, every few months, since the day he died. We'd had a break, and I'd hoped, maybe..."

Scott settled on the arm of Allison's chair, his hand resting high on her back. "I think Isaac let himself hope the same thing," he said.

The back door opened and Malia and Kira slipped in from the Preserve. Malia was mostly naked, leaves and twigs tangled in her hair, grumbling as she pulled on the clothes Kira was handing her. Danny grinned at them, and Kira grinned and waved back. Malia missed the whole exchange because her head was caught in the shirt she was trying to put on.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/132763692@N06/31078893686/in/photostream/)

Kira folded herself onto the floor at Allison's feet, while Malia wandered into the kitchen. She came back soon enough, rubbing her hand and muttering under her breath. Danny assumed someone in the kitchen had whacked her hand with a wooden spoon when she'd tried to sneak a piece.

Danny knew the minute Stiles and Jordan's cruiser pulled into the driveway, because Scott lifted his head and said, " _Bro_!" Allison snorted and shoved his arm so hard that only his alpha reflexes kept him from tumbling off the chair. "You're ridiculous," she said, smiling. Scott waggled his eyebrows at her, a movement so obviously learned from Stiles that Allison and Danny cracked up, and the atmosphere felt _slightly_ lighter.

The tension came back immediately, as the shifters went on alert. Danny raised an eyebrow at Liam, who was closest. "Stiles and Jordan?"

"And Lydia," he replied.

Danny nodded and tried not to look like he was freaking out. Stiles and Jordan frequently picked Lydia up on their way to the house after a shift. But lately some new and painfully obvious tension was crackling between Lydia and Jordan, and Danny felt a stab of sympathy for his poor boyfriend, stuck in a car with them.

A couple minutes later, Scott flinched and did a terrible job of covering it.

"Are they fighting?" Allison asked.

Scott shook his head. "Complete silence. No one's saying _anything_." Danny winced.

The front door opened, but only two sets of feet came in, and neither was Lydia's crisp, determined stride. One set stopped in the kitchen while the other approached the living room.

Jordan appeared in the doorway a minute later. He'd traded his uniform for jeans and a green T-shirt, and he looked _destroyed_. He waved halfheartedly at everyone, then flopped next to Liam with a dramatic groan.

When Derek announced that dinner was ready, Lydia still hadn't come inside. Allison kept casting glances toward the door, her desire to give Lydia her space warring with her desire to bring Lydia inside where they could keep an eye on her. Danny reached deep and channeled his inner Jackson, which allowed him to shed pesky worries about agency and giving Lydia her space. He stood and waved at the back door. "I'll go get her. Leave us some food, please. Jackals."

The weather was far from what Danny would call pleasant. It was late spring in northern California, and the days could fool you into thinking summer was coming early, but the nights were Old Man Winter's children, scouring you with sharp breezes and sudden temperature drops. Danny shivered, wishing he'd grabbed his jacket before he came outside.

Lydia was at the back of the yard near the storage shed, sitting in the bizarre and elegant metal bench/hammock... _thing_ Derek had created, looking strangely cradled in its curving sides, staring into the Preserve with a look Danny felt compelled to call "morose determination." She held her spine straight and her shoulders up, not so much as a hair or button out of place. Danny only knew she was cold because of how tightly she'd drawn her arms in against her sides. And he only knew she was in any emotional distress because she was turning the ring on her right hand.

Danny eased himself into the bench at Lydia's side and knocked his shoulder against hers. "Dinner's ready," he said. And then he waited.

Lydia was the master of pulling herself together and letting her problems wait until later. But even though Danny could tell that she'd brought her attention back from wherever it had gone, she made no move to go inside. She stared into the Preserve, miserable but present. "How did it feel?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

Danny glanced over at her, eyebrows raised. "How did what feel?"

Lydia sighed. "The moment you knew you wanted Stiles as your third. I mean, really _knew_. I've never..." She shook her head.

"You should be having this conversation with Jordan," Danny said gently, but he stayed on the bench. Lydia would have the conversation with Jordan when she was ready to. If she needed to use Danny as a test run, he could give her that.

She shook her head again. "It's not—I'm not dyadic. He's worried about that. I _want_ a third. I just—I'm _sure_ of Jordan. The way I was sure of Jackson. And _no one else_ feels sure the same way."

Danny chuckled ruefully. "Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck. "The thing is, it wasn't like that with Derek and me. "We knew before we even started that we wanted Stiles as our third."

Lydia huffed. "Well, then, _you_ are no help at all."

They sat in silence for a while, rocking the bench gently. Danny slid his arm around Lydia's shoulders; Lydia rested her head on Danny's chest. Danny knew his stomach was gearing up for a massive protest grumble, and he hoped there would be _something_ left inside. But Lydia had been one of his best friends, once upon a time, and they hadn't had a quiet moment together in over a year. He didn't want it to end just yet.

The door opened behind them, and heavy footsteps clomped up the walk. Danny wasn't surprised when Jordan came into his field of vision. "Hey," Jordan said, eyes fixed on Lydia.

Lydia blinked up at him. "Hi."

The tension was thick and jagged. Danny cleared his throat. "You didn't bring us dinner, Parrish? I'm hurt."

"It's your damned house, Mahealani," he shot back with a faint smile. "Feed yourself."

Danny clucked his tongue. "Such rude behavior in a guest," he chided, but he was already maneuvering himself out of the bench. He gestured for Jordan to take the empty space, but Lydia made a disapproving noise and grabbed his hand, gesturing for him to help her up.

"I think it's time to go back inside," she said. The challenge was clear in her tone, but the smile she offered Jordan seemed genuine, and the one Jordan gave her in return seemed relieved.

Danny clapped Jordan on the shoulder as they passed. "You're a good guy," he said quietly. He wasn't sure if Lydia could hear, but he knew Jordan's ears would pick it up. "Now you have to not be a dick."

Back in the house, Danny slipped into his usual spot on Derek's right and across from Stiles. He was just in time to hear Isaac ask if the killer was having sex with the victims before killing them to try to "turn" them triadic. Looked like, in his and Lydia's absence (and with John gone), everyone had decided that grilling Stiles and Jordan about the case was fair game.

"What?" Stiles' eyes were wide, and he exchanged a panicked glance with Jordan as he and Lydia returned to their seats. "Where the hell did you hear _that_?"

Isaac shrugged. "The guys at the cemetery aren't known for their towering displays of sensitivity. A lot of rumors are flying."

Stiles dropped his head into his hands. "Fucking buckets," he muttered.

Derek squeezed Stiles' shoulder, and Danny tapped their feet together under the table. Stiles lifted his head and smiled gratefully at them. He picked up his fork and slid his food around his plate, but his appetite had clearly taken a hit.

"Hey, guys," Danny said as he spooned roasted potatoes onto his plate, "maybe we can shut up about this until after dinner?"

There were a lot of sheepish grumbles, but the interrogation subsided. Stiles caught Danny's eye and mouthed " _thank you_ " with such exaggerated enunciation Danny almost started laughing. He smiled and tilted his water glass in Stiles' direction.

"So what has everyone been up to?" Hayden, bless her, must've thought she was steering the conversation into safer waters. "Hey, Lydia, didn't you and Jordan have a date the other night?" Half the table tensed up. Hayden blinked. "Or, uh... we could talk about the baby?"

Lydia sighed and took a dainty bite of chicken. "It's okay. And _it_ was okay—the date."

"I didn't like him," Jordan admitted, eyes on his plate. "He was... overeager."

"Yeah," Lydia agreed, smiling at him. "Overeager."

"Valerie's single," Hayden said, "and she likes you two a _lot_."

Jordan grimaced. "I mean... your sister's _great_ ," he ventured, "but the nepotism policy—"

"Only applies to hiring," Stiles put in, grinning broadly. "Since you both _already_ work there—"

"Dude, not helping," Danny hissed.

Stiles beamed. "Helping _so much_."

Everyone laughed—even Jordan and Lydia—and the conversation turned to other things going on in the pack's lives. Derek's newest sculpture wasn't turning out the way he wanted; Allison and Chris were excited by developments in their coalition of progressive hunters and supernaturals; Erica's staff and volunteers at the Adventure Center were cleaning and organizing frantically in preparation for their annual audit from Department of Education inspectors.

Danny released a slow breath and let himself relax for the first time all evening. They were a mess, this pack of theirs, but they got better every day. Today had been rocky, but the evening was shaping up to be pretty good.

Then Scott, mouth stuffed to chipmunk proportions, looked at Malia and said, "I didn't know you were taking classes this semester."

Malia raised her eyebrows. "I'm not."

Scott frowned in adorable confusion. Isaac must've poked him, because he jumped and swallowed with a sheepish smile. "No, I just—" He held up a finger and gulped half his milk at once.

"Our alpha, folks," Stiles murmured, and Derek grinned into his hands.

"I just thought, because yesterday I heard—I'm sorry, you were on the phone with Henry. And you said something about 'this stupid assignment,' and I thought—"

"You think the assignment is _stupid_?" Kira demanded, sounding hurt.

"You told your _dad_ about the assignment?" Stiles squawked, sounding legitimately horrified.

Silence crashed over the group. Danny wasn't sure where to look. Stiles' face was blotchy. Kira looked hurt and angry and shifty, an expression Danny recognized because Kira was his bro in inability to keep secrets. Malia was so defiant Danny was sure she _had to_ know that she wasn't supposed to have done whatever she had done. Everyone else seemed confused.

No, wait—Jordan looked like he was putting _all_ of his effort into keeping his face neutral. And Derek looked like he was about to explode all over everyone.

"Stiles." At the sound of Derek's voice, Danny instinctively scooted his chair back a couple inches. He hadn't heard this tone out of Derek since high school, this angry, _horrified_ flatness, like he was covering fear with rage and _everything_ with utterly faked apathy. "Is there any chance you sent Malia and Kira undercover in some sort of dyadic group where they could get _killed_?"

Stiles glanced briefly at Danny but seemed to realize that Danny couldn't do anything to help him on this one. "Derek—"

"Did. You."

"Derek," Kira said softly, "we volunteered."

"We practically forced Stiles and Jordan to let us," Malia added.

"Well..." Melissa said, bobbing her head back and forth, "it still had to be their decision, right?"

"We're trying to catch a serial killer," Jordan said, choosing each word with such obvious care it was painful to listen to. "The Beacon County Sheriff's Department frequently works with members of communities impacted by crime to ensure that we find solutions that work for them, rather than attempting to impose our solutions—"

"This isn't a press conference," Cora said tightly. "This is our _family_."

"Yeah, but I'm an _adult_ ," Malia snapped. "God, why does everyone but Kira treat me like a child?"

"Sweetie—" Lydia started.

" _Just like that_!" Malia shouted. "Oh my _god_. This is such bullshit—sorry, guys." She glanced at Quincy. Boyd, Erica, and Cora shook their heads and waved away her concern. "I get it," Malia huffed, pent up frustration spewing to the surface at last. "Malia's never had a broken heart. Malia's never heard of Rohypnol. Malia doesn't know who Beyoncé is. I lived in the woods as a coyote for most of my life; I didn't have exposure to the supposedly wonderful world of human culture.

"But I was _living_ in the _woods_ as a _coyote_. It's eat or be eaten out there. Literally. I have killed, and I have been _this close_ to being killed. So by all means, teach me your stupid social rituals and tell me why it's a crime to wear _that_ lipstick with _those_ shoes. But do not, for one minute, think I've never encountered _danger_. That I wouldn't know what to do if some serial killer tried to make me their next victim. I know what I'm doing, and, frankly, if you had let _me_ hunt this bastard down, you'd have six fewer victims, because your killer would be _dead_."

"Malia," Derek started brokenly. Then he stopped, staring at his plate. Danny reached under the table and wasn't surprised to find Derek's hand clenched in a fist. Danny glanced at Stiles and saw the same subtle dip to his shoulder, the one that said he was holding Derek's other hand.

"Derek, I get it," Malia said, much softer, her eyes on Derek. "I don't even understand how you get out of bed every day, given everything you'd lost. But you can't keep me—either of us," she added, glancing quickly at Cora, who nodded once in support, "you can't keep us wrapped in cotton. We're adults. We deserve lives. And you don't get to tell us otherwise. Someone's killing couples. No way we were going to sit back and let that keep happening."

" _Cops_ go undercover, Malia," Derek said. His voice was brittle, but he looked less likely to fall to pieces at the slightest breeze.

Kira shook her head. "That wasn't an option," she said. "We've talked about it with Stiles and Jordan, and with Sheriff Stilinski, and they've promised to work on the department's problems as they're able. In the meantime, we were the best option they had for getting results." She smiled knowingly at the cops around the table.

Jordan nodded. He turned to Derek, wearing his Serious Deputy expression, which Danny had to work hard not to snicker at. "Agreed on all counts," he said. "I can't absolutely _promise_ that nothing will happen to them, but I _can_ promise that we're throwing all of our resources into keeping this assignment as safe as possible."

Derek swallowed. His hand slowly started to unfurl under Danny's fingers. "Thank you, Jordan," Derek said, slow and soft like a pile of gravel gradually washing away. He turned his hand over and squeezed Danny's fingers before withdrawing his hand and putting it on the table with the other. Danny and Stiles both straightened up and smiled at each other.

"So how is the killer choosing victims?" Erica asked as though 1) none of the past five minutes had happened; and 2) that question was in any way appropriate dinner conversation.

Stiles groaned. "Didn't we say _after_ dinner?" he asked.

Jordan shook his head. "Give up, Stiles. They've got the bit in their mouths now."

"Did you compare us to _horses_?" Allison asked, four parts amused, one part offended.

Isaac shrugged. "If the bridle fits..."

Allison shoved his shoulder, sending him swaying into Scott, and they all chuckled.

"So far," Jordan said, clearly giving up on anything regarding confidentiality and proprietary, "the victims have been couples who belonged to one of two dyadic organizations. We don't know if that's coincidence or if there's something important about _those_ organizations in particular, instead of Beacon County's five other dyadic organizations."

"That you know of," Malia said into her juice, and Kira snickered and elbowed her.

"You know of others?" Stiles asked sharply.

"Maybe." Malia held his gaze defiantly.

"We've talked about this, Stiles," Kira said patiently. "You don't even know what you don't know about Beacon County's dyadic population."

Stiles let out a sharp, frustrated huff and tugged his hair. "Then _tell me_. We can't find this bastard if you don't tell us the things we need to know about the victim pool."

Kira and Malia exchanged guilty glances. Kira sighed and pointed her fork at Jordan. "Tomorrow at 10. The two of us and the two of you. Dyadics 101: now with more cop-friendly hand gestures."

Derek was grinning as he went to the kitchen and came back with cookies he'd made earlier. The atmosphere had shifted in the last few minutes, especially in Derek. There still seemed to be a lot of anger simmering beneath the surface, but at least now they felt—or at least Danny did—like Malia and Kira could protect themselves if anything happened. Obviously, none of them were _happy_ that a serial killer had come so boldly into their territory, but there was a sort of peace in the room that hadn't been there before. Danny supposed it was the best they could hope for at the moment.

* * *

"Hey, are you sure about this?" Malia as Kira turned onto Brenda Humboldt's street. "I mean, this is a _lot_ of dedication to the assignment."

Kira laughed as she started checking house numbers. "This isn't not about the assignment. I _want_ to join Two Together."

Malia blinked. "Since _when_?"

Kira gave her a brief and inscrutable glance. "Since I suggested it?"

"Shit, sorry." Malia rubbed the back of her neck and stared hard out the windshield. Being in a "normal" human relationship still gave her trouble sometimes, having to talk about feelings rather than shifting and trying to wrestle the problem into submission. "I thought you were just… _really_ into being undercover."

Kira laughed brightly, a sound that warmed Malia to the core and started to melt away the knot of worry in her chest. Kira pulled up to the curb and put the car in park. Malia looked curiously at the houses: small, Spanish-style architecture, and riots of color in the yard. Except for the house they were parked in front of, which had the most regimented front lawn Malia had ever seen.

"We won't stay long," Kira said. For a second Malia was confused because, no, they _couldn't_ stay long; they were meeting with Laredo in two hours. Then Kira continued, "Beacon City is a long way to travel for this. Maybe we'll find another group closer to home. But for now, we know the people here, and we like them, and it won't be a murder zone forever. Might be nice to hang out with people like us now and then."

There it was again, that need for _belonging_ that Malia didn't understand. Malia nodded and touched Kira's cheek. Kira sighed happily and leaned into the touch. She kissed Malia's palm and then sprang out of the car with a delighted grin. "Come on!" she called. "Brenda's got _cats_!"

Brenda's cats started hissing the _second_ Malia walked through the door. She grinned at Kira, who shook her head and tried to look disapproving. Which was difficult given how hard she was also trying not to laugh.

Brenda frowned into the house, where the tip of an orange tail was just visible bounding up the stairs. "I don't understand," she said. "They're usually so calm, even around strangers."

Malia shrugged. "I have that effect sometimes," she said. Kira turned her snort into a sneeze and elbowed her in the ribs.

Brenda led them into the living room and gestured at the couch and two chairs clustered around the coffee table. "Sit wherever you like. I'm going to make us all some tea, if you'd like. You can start on the paperwork."

"Yes, please," Kira said. "Tea would be lovely."

After Brenda left the room, Kira raised her eyebrows at the two red folders sitting on the coffee table. She hadn't realized that joining Two Together would be so _formal_. Actually, she wasn't sure why they'd had to come here at all. Joining a community organization usually just meant showing up to meetings and paying dues every year. This was the first she'd heard of a group that made you sign anything beforehand.

She shrugged it off and sat on the couch, patting the spot next to her. "Coming?" she asked Malia.

Malia had stopped in the middle of the living room, head lifted the way Jordan and the shifters did when they were chasing a confusing scent. "I thought I smelled..." She stood a moment longer, a frustrated scowl creasing her forehead. Then she shook her head. "Gone now," she said, dropping onto the couch beside Kira.

The packets weren't what Kira had expected. A welcome sheet laid out the group's mission and vision statements. A calendar alerted them to upcoming social and political events. A stack of brochures and business cards was clipped to a note reading, "For your dyadic friends."

Kira laughed and set the bundle aside. She didn't _have_ dyadic friends; that was the whole point of joining Two Together. She'd had a few before they moved to Beacon Hills, but she'd lost touch with them in the chaos of her first year here. She could've tried harder to meet other dyadics at BHHS, but her pack was the closest group of friends she could ask for, and once she realized Malia was it for her for as long as Malia would have her, there was no point in joining a dyad dating group. But lately she was feeling the tug. Kira knew the pack loved her and Malia fiercely, but they couldn't _understand_ what she and Malia went through the way other dyadics could. Couldn't understand the havoc this serial killer was wreaking in Kira's heart and mind. So maybe Kira needed to spend more time with people who _did_ understand.

Kira was rereading the vision statement when Brenda bustled in with a small tray. She set it on the table and gestured to three delicate china cups with trios of frolicking birds around the rim. She moved the cat on the nearer armchair and sat in its place. "Help yourself to tea. It's a green, so it should be at a good drinking temperature now."

"Thank you," Kira said, picking up the teacup. Malia leaned across her and grabbed a cup with far less care, also swiping two iced shortbread cookies.

"Now," Brenda said, placing her cup and saucer on the end table at her elbow, "you probably have questions about the membership packet."

"Not really," Malia said. She took a huge gulp of tea. She grinned toothily at Brenda as she stuffed a whole cookie into her mouth.

Kira looked at her and then back at Brenda. "Would you excuse us for a moment?" she asked, starting to stand.

Brenda smiled knowingly. "Of course. No, please, no need to move yourselves. I'll pop back into the kitchen."

"What's going on with you?" Kira hissed as soon as Brenda was out of the room.

"Whar you tal'ing a'out?" Malia asked, her mouth still mostly crammed with cookie.

Kira grabbed the teacup out of her hand. " _This_. You're being rude, and I'm not sure why. If _you_ don't want to join, you don't have to. We're allowed to have separate interests."

A pinched look crossed Malia's face, and Kira waited. "I… I'm not sure I'm going to say this right. Just—something about her is _different_ here. She's not the same as she was at the meeting."

"Well, this is her home," Kira pointed out. "She's comfortable here. More relaxed."

"Yeah." Malia bit her lip. Her eyes darted around the living room. "But what's she relaxing _into_?"

" _What_?" Kira's eyes widened, and her voice came out louder than she'd wanted, but it was hard to hear over the ringing in her ears. "What are you _talking_ about?" She frowned and pushed weakly at Malia's arm. "And stop _moving_."

"I'm not! _You_ are! I just—I feel like—like—"

Kira tried to grab for Malia, but she couldn't make her arms obey. "M'lia," she called weakly. "M'lia wha—"

"I'm gonna puke," Malia said, voice suddenly clear again.

Kira didn't get to find out whether she did. She was falling, falling. She tried to brace for impact, but she was unconscious by the time she hit the floor.

*

When Stiles' phone buzzed in his pants pocket, Parrish jerked upright with a confused snort. Stiles laughed and slid his phone out, frowning slightly when he saw Danny's work number on the display.

Danny had hit pay dirt in his examination of Nathaniel Lardeo's "pertinents." Laredo had a long history of antisocial and threatening behavior, and a whopping dose of dyphobia to boot. He'd briefly belonged to a _host_ of "traditional family" organizations over the years, each time leaving (often under a cloud) in under six months.

Laredo's track record with dyadic organizations didn't seem much better. Reports of harassing members, arguing with leaders about fundamental principles of their organizations, like the inherent worth of dyadics and the importance of safe spaces. He'd been accused of anti-dyadic slurs and attempting to interest other members in joining reparative therapy programs, despite scientific and social consensus that they were utter bunk. None of this was in Laredo's official file, so they had to tread carefully in how they used it.

Hence sending in Kira and Malia to meet with him. The plan was hazier than Stiles was comfortable (hey, his high school plans had been shit, but they'd been _complete_ ). The best case scenario was that Kira and Malia could coax a confession out of Laredo _without_ turning into his next targets. It seemed like a taller order than any of them were willing to acknowledge at present, but it was a fond hope.

Kira and Malia had said they had something they needed to take care of first, and Stiles and Jordan had agreed to catch up with each other near the coffee shop where they were meeting Laredo to fit them with wires. Then they'd surreptitiously followed Kira's car. It wasn't that Stiles and Jordan didn't trust them. It was more that this was one of those moments in a case where everything could conceivably go wrong, and they very much wanted to be on hand if anything did.

They'd been startled when they realized that Brenda Humboldt's house was Kira and Malia's mystery destination. Parrish, convinced this was a boring digression before the main event, had slipped into that glazed-over not-quite-sleep state perfected by cops worldwide. Stiles was less sure about where they stood with Humboldt, so he'd been sitting bolt upright since the instant Malia and Kira walked up the sidewalk.

Stiles forced himself to focus on his phone as he answered the call. "Danny?"

"Hey, Stiles," Danny said, his voice frazzled. "Put me on speaker?"

Stiles looked at Parrish, eyebrows raised, as he slid the phone into the dashboard docking station that allowed the call to come through the speakers. "Go ahead, Danny," he said.

"Hey, Jordan. So, listen,  it turns out it isn't that common for folks to belong to more than one of the local dyad organizations. And _nobody_ belonged to both Two Together and Mission Dolorosa."

Stiles made a hurt noise. "Disappointing."

"Yeah, but check this out. Evelyn Garrett and Willa Bartz, the second couple, and Tyrone Granger and Dante Ortiz, the third, in addition to belonging to Mission Dolorosa, were members of Redeemer."

Parrish's eyebrows shot up. "The church where Two Together meets?"

"Also a church with a special group for dyadic members."

Stiles swallowed, his mouth dry and his heart rate picking up. He clenched his hands on his thighs and dropped his head forward, trying to focus on breathing.

"Hey. Stiles." Danny's voice dropped and softened, speaking as if they were alone in a room together instead of on opposite ends of a phone call with Parrish in the car. "Stiles, it's okay. There's no way you could've known."

That was _exactly_ the problem. They _couldn't_ have known. He and Parrish had focused on the seven official dyadic organizations, but Stiles had always known that they were missing a lot of ground. Church groups. Internet forums. Hell, he was pretty sure the store where Danny's mima bought her fancy yarns had a dyadic knitting group. Just because the victims had so far all belonged either to Two Together or Mission Dolorosa hadn't meant that was their _only_ point of commonality, and Stiles thought he'd come to grips with that. Seeing the proof in front of him said that he wasn't as okay as he'd thought.

"Sorry," Stiles rasped. "I'm okay now."

"It's fine," Danny assured him. "I'm sending a photo I found on Redeemer's public website. I didn't even need to abuse that authority you guys give me." Stiles' tablet lit up with the incoming message, and he opened the picture and tilted the screen so Parrish could see it.

"Shit," Parrish said. "There are Granger and Ortiz, and... Bartz and Garrett over here."

"Laredo doesn't belong to Redeemer," Danny said, "so there's that angle busted. But here's something I thought was weird. Isn't that—"

Stiles brought the tablet closer to his face, and Parrish snorted. Stiles ignored him. "That's Brenda Humboldt from Two Together."

"Okay, good, I was right about that," Danny said, in a tone that left Stiles very much in doubt that "good" was what he meant. "The thing is," he continued, "Brenda Humboldt isn't on Redeemer's membership list."

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "Is _that_ an abuse of authority?"

Danny laughed. "You do _not_ want to know, Stilinski." Stiles smiled wryly and opened the file Danny had sent, a spreadsheet of Redeemer's member list, where, sure enough, Humboldt, Brenda, was not.

"There's no caption on that picture," Danny was saying, "but Redeemer is kind enough to keep three months' worth of church newsletters on their website, and I found another picture from when a bunch of them went to some conference together earlier this year."

Stiles opened yet another PDF and regretted how relentlessly _organized_ Danny was. He looked at the picture and froze.

_Members of the Redeemer Dyadic Study Group attend the Disciples of Christ assembly in Seattle last November. L-r: Evelyn Garrett, Celia Marshall, Willa Bartz, Ty Granger, Dante Ortiz, and Barbara Hennessey._

Barbara Hennessey. Stiles switched windows back to the church's membership list and scrolled to H. Barbara Hennessey—at an address very familiar to him. The address of a house he'd _been to_ , where he and Parrish had told Brenda Humboldt the bad news that two of her group members had been killed. The address of a house Malia and Kira were at now.

"Brenda Humboldt was on the Two Together list you gave me," Danny said as Stiles' sense of security crumbled. "But she was at the very end where you'd scribbled her in, so I'm just getting to her. And it turns out this is not the first time Barbara Hennessey has been under police scrutiny. She grew up in Tucson and was an active participant in the 'traditional marriage' movement there. Got arrested a couple times for threatening people and violent protesting."

Parrish's eyes widened. " _What_?"

"Then, three years ago, she moved to California and signed on as a plaintiff in that huge case against Love's Firm Foundations."

Lord, Stiles remembered that case. Mostly he remembered what a _dick_ Haigh had been during it. It was the first time Stiles had heard Haigh opine that dyadics and monos should be locked up in psychiatric institutions rather than accepted or "healed" as LFF, the nation's largest dyadic "conversion therapy" inpatient program, claimed to do. He wished he could say it'd been the last.

Stiles tapped his finger against his lips and tried to remember the details of that case. "A lot of those charges were—I mean, they basically boiled down to psychological torture. Right?"

Parrish nodded. Danny was silent for a second, and Stiles pictured him rubbing his eyes to buy time. "I'm hunting down transcripts, trying to see if I can find Humboldt—Hennessey? Trying to find her testimony."

"I have a rough idea what it says. Torture. Brainwashing." Stiles shook his head. "God, these _fuckers_. Don't even realize the _damage_ they're doing. Or maybe they do realize and don't care."

"What are you thinking?" Danny asked.

Stiles never got to say what he was thinking, because Parrish leapt out of the car and sprinted at top speed toward Brenda Humboldt's house. "Call for backup!" he yelled behind him.

Now Stiles had a dilemma. When Jordan Parrish, cop, yelled that instruction while racing toward a suspect's house, he meant _police_ backup. But Stiles Stilinski, packmember, was thinking of someone who could be here _much_ faster.

The call connected on the third ring. "Hey, babe," Stiles said, trying for sunny and snarky and hitting roughly in the neighborhood of terrified and apologetic. "Don't freak out, okay?"

*

Derek freaked out.

So did Cora, who happened to be at the house with Erica and Quincy when Derek took the call. Stiles barely got the whole sentence out before Erica took over the phone and said, amusement sparkling in every word, "Got two fully shifted Hale wolves staring me down, Batman. Better give them the address before they track down your scent and rip it out of you with their teeth."

Stiles gave them the address. _Fast_.

* * *

Malia felt like she'd been run over by a stampeding deer herd. Then she moved, shifting from side to side, and realized that the aching sensation came from _inside_ her head, which felt heavy and detached from the rest of her body. Drugs. Brenda had spiked the fucking tea. Malia growled. She'd always _known_ tea was evil.

She was zip-tied to a post. By _multiple_ zip ties. Her feet were similarly bound to the legs of a metal chair. Kira was on the other side of the post, back to back with Malia and no doubt bound the same way. Her heartbeat sounded slower than Malia liked, but it was steady. Still unconscious.

Malia looked around as much of the room as she could see, which wasn't much. To her right, a large-capacity washer and dryer sat against the wall under a small, high window. To her right, newish-looking wooden stairs led up to a heavy door. Basement, then. In front of her sat the shrine.

On a low card table, a dozen lit white pillar candles flickered serenely. On the wall above them, strung on what looked like industrial-grade wire, hung eight photographs. Malia swallowed hard as she took them in. The were portraits, of a sort, one person per photo. Everyone's eyes were closed, and they'd been made up carefully for the picture—hair neatly styled, makeup delicately applied to. Their expressions were tranquil, faces tilted upward as if looking toward heaven. The pictures didn't show much beyond their faces, but in a few, a glimpse of white was visible around the shoulders and throat. Malia had seen enough of Stiles and Jordan's notes (yeah, she'd snooped, what of it?) to know that the killer had dressed each victim in a white robe before laying them out.

There was such tranquility in the photos that Malia could _almost_ believe they were just artfully posed pictures of people at rest, that the people in them had popped up seconds later and gone on with their days. Except for the symbols.

Malia's stomach lurched, and she was glad that the pictures cut off at the neck. Stiles and Jordan hadn't shown them crime scene photos, but Stiles had mentioned a "ritualistic" aspect to the killings, and symbols carved on the eyelids seemed awfully ritualistic to her. She swallowed hard against the drugged tea trying to come back up and forced herself to look at the pictures again. If they escaped before Stiles and Jordan got here (Stiles and Jordan had been following them, hadn't they? She couldn't imagine Stiles letting them out of his sight. She wouldn't _let_ herself imagine it), she might have to describe the place where they'd been held, and every detail would count. Plus, she felt some sense that she owed it to the memory of these eight people who'd been slaughtered so needlessly to look at what had been done to them. To see and remember.

Behind her, Kira stirred, and her heartbeat spiked for a second before settling back into an elevated but steady rhythm. "Hey," Malia said softly. "You okay?"

Kira groaned. "Not at _all_ ," she said, but an exaggerated whine in her tone told Malia she hadn't _completely_ lost heart.

Malia grinned and felt down and behind for the zip ties, "Do you know what 'kinds-lybe' means?"

"Kinds-lybe?" Malia swore she _heard_ the confused frown in Kira's voice. "I don't—" She froze and said, in a quiet voice of rigidly enforced calm, "could you please spell that?"

"Yeah, uh—" Malia squinted at the board. The letters were handwritten and needlessly ornate, which made them hard to read. "k-i-n-d-e-s-l-i-e-b-e."

Kira swore and lifted her wrists higher. It had to hurt, but it gave Malia a higher likelihood of cutting through the ties _without_ opening a vein in either of their wrists, which made it a winning strategy in her book. " _Kindesliebe_ ," Kira said, the pronunciation _nothing_ like Malia had guessed. "It's German. Literally 'a child's love.' More often translated as 'child _ish_ love.' It used to be a term for dyadics." Her voice heavily threaded with uncertainty, she asked, "Why?"

"Brenda has a sort of... shrine, I guess, to the dead couples. It says, 'Good night, my unfinished children, sleep soundly, _kindesliebe_.'" She hoped she'd done okay on the pronunciation. "It's _super_ creepy-looking."

Kira froze for a moment. Malia sawed faster. "I bet it is," Kira said. "That's—" She swallowed hard and didn't attempt to finish her sentence.

Malia moved her arm back and nudged Kira with her elbow. "What? What is it? Come on. Show off that big geek brain."

" _Now_?"

Malia shrugged. She was almost through the first zip tie. "You got anywhere else to be?"

Kira giggled nervously and took a deep breath. "Okay, uh, Western European history of dyadism, condensed version. In, uh, from about the Middle Ages on, the most common word for dyadics in Western Europe was 'unfinished.' Because dyadic relationships were considered incomplete, dyadic _people_ came to be considered incomplete, as well. Like they had an empty spot in them. Unfinished."

"That's kind of cute," Malia said, cheering as the first tie snapped and she started on the second.

"Sort of?" Kira's voice lost its nervous hesitance and fell into the cadence she used when she gave tours at the museum. "Common belief held that the most likely candidate for filling that empty spot was a demon. So if you were a known dyadic, you were probably going to die.

"Then _Freud_ came along." An eye roll was practically audible in Kira's voice. "And _he_ said dyadism a perfectly normal stage in human sexual development."

"That sounds better than having an empty spot for demons," Malia said. She twisted her claw, and the second tie popped open. " _Yes_!"

Kira laughed softly, barely a huff of breath as she worked against the ties. "Yeah, I guess. Only Freud thought it was a normal stage in _childhood_ sexual development. I guess he was watching his daughter play with other super-rich kids at her super-rich kids school, and he decided that, though even the youngest kids played at triads, they actually formed strong pair bonds. Which led him to think that dyadic relationships were 'how children loved. So, _'Kindesliebe'_ ; childish love. An adult dyadic, in Freud's mind, was someone who, probably due to some traumatic childhood experience, had had their development arrested, and had never learned how to form 'normal' triadic attachments, which he called _Reifeliebe_. Mature love."

Malia paused in her clawing. She looked again at the lovingly framed pictures. _Kindesliebe_. _Unfinished children_. Something cold and slimy settled in her gut. "So Brenda sees dyadics as children and is... what?"

"She probably thinks we weren't parented correctly, and she's trying to give us the 'proper upbringing' we missed. Think about reparative therapy camps. I mean, the worst ones are about guilt and shame, a lot of biblical stuff, but the others are about healing childhood trauma to allow for 'mature' relationships. It's baked in at a foundational societal level."

Malia shook her head. "Damn."

"Yeah, damn." There was a pause as Kira twisted her wrists and snapped the last tie. "You did it!" she yelped and leapt out of her chair. "Oh my god, Malia, you did it!"

Malia jumped up, too, spinning around and catching Kira in a crushing hug. " _We_ did it."

Kira snorted. "You cut the ties. I babbled about the boring history of words for dyadics."

Malia cupped Kira's jaw with both hands and kissed her, hard and fierce, insistent tongue and clacking teeth. She yanked herself away, panting, but kept her hands on Kira's face. " _We_ did it, Kira. You kept me focused while I worked so I wouldn't worry about anything else. I couldn't have done that without you."

Kira blushed and squeezed Malia's hips, which she'd grabbed during the kiss. "Thank you. Let's get out of here."

Malia didn't need her to ask twice. She dropped her hands and grabbed one of Kira's with her own, racing toward the stairs out of the basement. When they got there, they froze, heads tilted identically, listening hard. "Shit!" Malia muttered. "She's coming."

Kira patted the pockets of her jeans. "She took our phones."

Malia jerked her chin toward the chairs they'd abandoned. "Go! Sit!" Kira looked crestfallen as she nodded and raced back across the basement toward the chairs.

Malia, unfortunately, wasn't so fast, because now that she was turned around, she could see what Kira had been looking at all this time. She had a half second of being in awe of how calm and unruffled her girlfriend had managed to sound while looking at _that_ before her mind threatened to shut down in the face of it.

While Malia had been whining about how creepy it was to look at beautifully framed photographs of obviously dead people, Kira had been looking at _actual implements of death_. There was an embalmer's table, complete with openings for fluid drainage, beside a smaller table covered with makeup. Beside the makeup sat a rack of clothing, all of it pure, dazzling white, brand new. On the other side, a professional photography setup.

Bile filled the back of Malia's throat, and she swallowed it down. She and Kira were different from Brenda's other victims, so their story would end differently. And then Brenda would never be able to hurt anyone again. She wished she still had her phone so she could take pictures of this setup. Every bit helped, right?

The creak of an old doorknob turning yanked Malia back to reality. She dropped into her chair and put her hands behind her back like they had been before. Since they weren't actually bound, she could feel around for Kira's hands and cling to them like lifelines. Kira kindly didn't comment on the sheer desperation that Malia felt was shouting out of every cell in her body. Or maybe Kira was feeling equally desperate.

The door at the top of the basement stairs opened as Kira whispered, "Act unconscious!"

Malia slumped in her chair, letting her shoulders slump and her head loll, imitating as well as she could remember it the position she'd been in when she'd come to in this hideous place.

Malia slitted her eyes open enough to confirm that, yes, it _was_ Brenda who'd come to kill them. She was, as tall and stately as ever, now wearing a dark red ceremonial robe that Malia had to admit looked _great_ for hiding bloodstains.

Brenda walked down the stairs with an even, almost measured cadence, like she was moving in time to a beat in her head. When Brenda reached the bottom of the steps, Malia realized just how apt that thought had been. Brenda was chanting, quiet and sure, as she moved through the space. Something Latin, maybe. A spell? A prayer? It was short and measured, letting Brenda repeat it by rote as it set the pace for her movement through the space. It would have seemed clever if it weren't the most disturbing sound Malia had ever heard.

Brenda stopped first at the shrine to her victims. Standing at it put her back to Malia, so Malia couldn't see what scary-ass expression was on her face, but her tone was warm and soft, almost maternal. as she touched each photograph in turn, greeting the person in it by name. The sick feeling in the pit of Malia's stomach grew. Brenda had known every one of her victims. These weren't crimes of opportunity, a smash and grab at whatever dyadic couple happened to be handy. Brenda's kills were _curated_ , chosen by Brenda for some reason only she understood, out of a deep and genuine _knowledge_ of the victims.

"My darlings," Brenda cooed at the photo wall, "I've brought another couple home for you. I fervently hope they won't be joining you. I will endeavor, as I did with you, to show them the error of their ways. But if they will not listen—as you did not listen—" No surprise, Brenda's voice took on a sharper, harsher tone, not angry, but deeply disappointed, like a parent whose child had broken the priceless vase they'd been told repeatedly not to touch. "—then I'm afraid their fate will be the same as yours. Children who cannot obey must be punished. You all understood that, at the end, and I'm grateful. I just wish you'd been more _reasonable_."

Brenda moved to stand over Malia and Kira, tutting about them. Malia tensed and gave Kira's hand a lightning-fast squeeze before letting go. They only got one chance at this. Seconds later, Brenda began praying over them, possibly in Latin. Malia opened her eye enough to see that Brenda's eyes were closed. Brenda slowly stretched out her arms and lowered her hands to Malia and Kira's heads.

Seemed like as good a time as any.

Malia tapped Kira's hand. Kira tapped back. In her head, Malia counted _"one-one-thousand two-one-thousand three-one-thousand_ " and leapt out of her chair, eyes blazing and fangs bared.

Brenda's eyes snapped open, and she screamed, backing away from them. Kira didn't have claws and fangs, and she didn't have her katana, but Malia saw the foxfire glow out of the corner of her eye, and she didn't need to be able to see Kira's face to know that she was letting her eyes shine orange.

Brenda prayed faster, and in English now. No more poetic rhythms, just a frightened woman pleading for her life. "God protect me from Lilith's children!" she babbled, holding her fingers in front of herself in a cross form. "Spare your servant from the demon horde."

"We're not _demons_ ," Kira insisted. Malia felt like Kira was focusing on the wrong part of the problem, here, but if _her_ ancestors had been shoved into internment camps because someone thought they _might_ be dangerous, she'd be picky about nomenclature, too.

"Your eyes!" Brenda shrieked. "Your _teeth_! You are the Unfinished. God in His wisdom sent you as a test to us, to see if I could teach you His ways and help you find wholeness. But I failed you, and the demons made a home within you." She dropped the cross pose and held up both hands, palms out toward Malia and Kira, who were still advancing. Brenda came up short when her back collided with the shrine, but she stood steadfast and started chanting.

"We don't want to hurt you," Kira said. Malia imagined she was trying to be soothing, but Brenda looked _completely_ freaked out about one of the "demons" trying to talk to her. "We just... we need to not die, basically. And you have to stand trial for the other people you killed."

She shook her head. "I had to. Don't you understand? I wanted so much to _help_ them—I want to help you all. But they were so stubborn. Why are you all so _stubborn_?"

"Maybe because there's nothing wrong with us," Malia snapped.

"Your eyes are glowing," Brenda said, almost conversationally. Only the wild wideness of her eyes suggested how deep her fear and her psychosis went.

Malia shrugged. "Born this way," she quipped and heard Kira trying not to release the inappropriate giggle that had risen in her throat.

"Born flawed," Brenda said, and it'd been a long time since Malia had had her moms—the ones who raised her, not the ones who popped up every couple years and tried to kill her—but she remembered that tone. That was a torn skirt and twig-strewn hair tone.

"I thought God didn't _do_ flawed." It'd been a long time since Malia had had religion, too.

"Sometimes He purposely makes people who fall outside of what is normal, to test the ability of His faithful to return them to the righteous path." She shook her head, looking truly remorseful. "When we cannot return them to the righteous path, we must return them to Him." She gestured to the shrine at her back. "I could not return them to the righteous path."

"Shit, that is _messed up_ ," Malia grumbled, and she leapt.

Brenda screamed and tried to fight back, but she was outnumbered and overpowered, and putting the shrine, rather than the wall, at her back, gave Kira and Malia more than enough room to maneuver. They leapt onto her. She tried to claw at them with her fingernails, but Kira got her hands pinned behind her back in seconds. Then she lashed out with her teeth and, finally, her head, but Malia set a hand on her head and held her in place. Brenda hissed and kicked, trying to connect, but they were able to stay just out of reach.

"Somewhere in this basement, there _has to_ be something that can hold her," Malia said.

"Yeah," Kira agreed, "but how do we keep her from getting away while one of us lets go to find it?" Brenda's thrashing was growing more violent; if they didn't subdue her fast, she would get away no matter what they were trying. "God, what I wouldn't give for another pair of _hands_!"

Sometimes Malia wondered if she lived in a TV show, rather than normal reality. The moment the words were out of Kira's mouth, the high basement window, the frame around it, and several surrounding cinderblocks _exploded_ , showering them with glass and debris.

Kira shrieked, and in the pandemonium of trying to figure out what was going on, Brenda twisted out of their grip and ran toward the stairs. Malia swore and dove after her—and a giant fucking black wolf beat her to the punch.

"Derek what the _fuck_?!?" Malia yelped, but this wasn't the time to criticize—not when he had landed with his front paws in the middle of Brenda's back, bearing her to the ground and pinning her with his enormous bulk. Malia and Derek stared each other down for a minute, and Malia wasn't sure what she was waiting for him to do, but it rapidly became apparent that he intended to stand on Brenda, snarling and snapping his teeth inches from her face, until someone with a more reasonable method of restraint showed up.

Malia was a furious mass of adrenaline, which made her irrational, which led to her flicking Derek's ear and saying "Bad wolf!" as she sprinted past him to the drawer where the cable ties were. Derek snorted, like he'd heard her gratitude anyway.

Malia was a being of single-minded focus, rooting through the drawer for cable ties. She also hunted up rope and a clean-looking strip of cotton that could shut Brenda up about demons and wolf monsters for five fucking seconds. On her way back to Brenda and Derek, she looked around long enough to see another, slightly smaller, medium-brown wolf melting back into human shape and help Kira to her feet. Malia hadn't known Kira had been _off_ her feet, so she flashed Cora a brief but grateful smile as she passed.

Malia wasted five seconds trying to work around Derek's unyielding bulk before she huffed and looked up at him. "You make a better door than _any help at all_ ," she snapped. Derek huffed again but moved enough that Malia could get at Brenda's arms.

She might never have been a Girl Scout or a sailor or much interested in thumbs, so her knots weren't pretty, and they probably weren't the securest in the world. But combined with _four_ cable ties and two-hundred-plus pounds of fully shifted werewolf, she wasn't too worried.

Once Brenda was tied as best she could be to herself, Malia shoved Derek hard in the shoulder and said, " _Move_." He grumbled but stepped away, and Malia hauled Brenda to her feet long enough to shove her into the chair that Malia had occupied not long ago. She immediately went to work tying her to that, as well. The whole time, Derek stood _way_ too close, breath hot on the side of Malia's face, glowing eyes never moving from Brenda's face.

Malia grinned. Derek might be annoying, but he was clearly freaking the fuck out of Brenda. Malia leaned closer as she finished tying Brenda and her chair to the pole. "What do you think of _that_ demon?" she murmured. Derek snorted indignantly, but Malia had a point to make, damn it. "Best part? _He's_ triadic. Got the sweetest pair of boyfriends you'll ever meet—they're disgustingly adorable together, trust me. And there he is. A giant wolf. _Glowing_ at you." She grinned and flashed her own eyes at Brenda again. "So maybe being dyadic doesn't mean there's a space in me for a demon. Maybe whatever makes me seen 'demonic' is genetic." She tightened down the last cable tie slowly, one click per word: "Just. like. being. dyadic."

"Are _you_ monologuing the _villain_?"

Malia glanced up at the sheer disbelief in Cora's voice and grinned widely at her. "Maybe?" She pushed to her feet and spent the obligatory minute checking Kira for injuries that she knew, intellectually, had already healed. She couldn't stop herself from looking for anyway. "She needs to know how wrong she is."

Kira's smile turned sad at the corners, and she covered Malia's hands with her own, stilling them in the process of stroking over her face in an attempt to find sore spots. Kira looked into her eyes and said earnestly, "Malia, she's _insane_. I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist or anything, but that is a _crazy_ woman. Nothing you could say would get through to her. Look."

Malia reluctantly looked over. Brenda had stopped her active attempts to get free and was rocking back and forth as much as her bonds allowed, muttering through the gag in the same language she'd been using before. "Is that Latin?" Malia asked.

Cora nodded grimly. "I'm not Catholic, so I'm not 100 percent sure, but I _think_ that's the language that goes with an exorcism."

"That would make sense," Kira said, "since she thought we had demons in us." She glanced at Derek. "You shifting back anytime soon?"

Derek flicked an ear, which Malia knew was supposed to be a response of _some_ sort; she just couldn't figure out _what_ except that it had a lot of scorn. Then Derek tensed and raced toward the front door, starting up a howl that made the hairs on the back of Malia's neck stand up. She tilted her head and listened for whatever he'd heard, but hearing was better in shifted forms, so several more seconds passed before she caught the familiar whine of Stiles and Jordan's cruiser.

"Thank goodness," Kira said a split second later. The sheer relief in her voice gave something in Malia permission to unwind and stand down. She melted into Kira's side, letting the blue fade from her eyes and her teeth and claws retract. Kira wrapped an arm around her, and she pressed her face into the soft material of Kira's shirt and breathed in the scent of fabric softener and _home_.

Stiles and Jordan pounded on the front door with a lot of yelling, probably about how this was the police and open up and why did they _bother_ when Jordan was going to kick the door in?

"We're in the basement!" Cora called, because she was the only one in a position to speak much above a whisper right now. Malia heard Jordan repeat the news to Stiles, and then they were clattering down the steps, guns and flashlights at the ready, Jordan's eyes glowing in the basement dimness. Brenda's eyes widened, and she thrashed against the chair and pole.

"Yanno," Cora said dryly, leaning against the washer, "it's a good thing this woman is legitimately out of her mind, because she's going to be telling a _lot_ of stories about glowing eyes and giant wolves." She cast a pointed and judgmental eye at Derek, who huffed scornfully and stalked over to Stiles' side, leaning so heavily that Stiles almost went to the ground.

"Whoa, dude, jeez, we've talked about this," Stiles griped, even as his fingers sank into the thick fur at the ruff of Derek's neck. "Puny human is puny." Derek made a snorting noise that clearly conveyed his opinion on _that_. Stiles laughed and dug his fingers in, massaging muscle, and Derek's eyes slipped shut, the tension almost tangible as it slipped from his shoulders and back.

"Okay, can we do some policing now?" Jordan asked. He holstered his gun, slid his flashlight into his belt, and strode forward to where Brenda was secured to the pole. "Nice job with the knots."

"Really?" Malia asked, unexpectedly pleased.

Jordan shrugged. "Well, I mean, they're not _good_ knots, but they held."

Malia shoved his shoulder while Stiles replaced the ropes and cable ties with handcuffs, removed the gag, and rattled off Brenda's Miranda rights. When he got to the part where he asked her if she understood her rights, she stared at him for a long, slow moment. Probably, Malia realized, she was waiting to see if _his_ eyes would change colors and glow, or if he would sprout claws or fangs. After a moment, he shook his head, finished the warning, and hauled her to her feet.

Pandemonium reigned outside the house. Malia had been vaguely aware of other sirens adding their piercing wails to the one from Stiles and Jordan's cruiser, but she'd been too busy avoiding being killed to pay it much mind. Now she saw that backup had arrived in force: another cruiser and ambulance sat on the street in front of the house while a third cruiser and a fire truck blocked the alley haphazardly. Red and blue strobed across the house and trees and bounced off the gawking neighbors who stood on the sidewalks, both sides of the street up and down the block, trying to figure out what had disturbed their quiet, ordinary evening.

Judging by the light, it was 8 in the evening. Malia startled when something brushed against her, but it was just Kira's hand. Kira smiled, a little sadly, and took Malia's hand, lacing their fingers together. Malia turned and all but threw herself at Kira, face pressed against her shoulder, arms wrapping tight and desperate around her back.

Kira sighed and wrapped her own arm around Malia, rubbing gentle circles at the small of her back. "We'll be all right," she said. Her voice sounded firm and confident, but Malia heard the wobble in her heartbeat—Kira _wanted_ to believe her own words but wasn't sure she could yet.

Malia didn't call her on it, just nodded against the soft fabric of the shirt under her cheek and wanted to believe it, too.

She watched with one eye as Stiles and Jordan loaded Brenda into the back of the car. As Jordan slammed the door shut, he murmured, "She's not gonna pass a competency test."

Stiles sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Dude, right now I honestly do not care. She's off the streets, not killing anyone else. As long as she stays that way, I don't care if she's in jail or the psych ward. So long as she's gone and our friends are safe. Right?"

Jordan glanced toward Malia and Kira. Maybe they'd forgotten that Malia could hear every word they said. Maybe they didn't care. Jordan raised his eyebrows, and Malia shrugged. Maybe she would feel differently later, but at this moment she agreed with Stiles. As long as Brenda was someplace where she couldn't hurt anyone else, the _where_ was unimportant.

Jordan sighed like he was washing his hands of them all. "You'll need to come to the station," he told Malia, not bothering to walk across the yard to have a normal conversation with them. "We need your statements."

Malia nodded and untangled herself from Kira. "Will do," she said.

Kira twitched. "What?"

Malia jerked her chin across the street. "Jordan wants us at the station."

"Oh, right." Kira laughed and squirmed. "Forgot they'd want a statement. Isn't that funny?"

"You had other things on your mind," Malia said, ignoring the way her thumb came away wet when she stroked it across Kira's cheekbone.

Kira laughed wetly. "Maybe a little." She looked at the house, and the neighborhood. "Malia, did we—" She shook her head. "Never mind."

Malia cupped her cheek. "What?"

"Did we—" She pressed her lips together and took a breath. "Were there signs that we missed?"

"Oh." Malia let out a sharp breath. "I don't think so? I mean, she seemed so _nice_ , and that—I never heard her heartbeat skip or smelled any... deception or uneasiness on her. She really—I mean, you remember what she said. She thought she was _helping_ those people." Malia swallowed. "She thought she was helping us. She was completely unhinged, and I super don't understand how she covered that as well as she did for as long as she did, but, no. It's not our fault that we didn't see it."

"I guess." Guilt and self-doubt were pouring strongly off Kira. "I keep thinking about the meeting we went to, and—we were right there. The killer _and_ her last victims. Isn't that why they sent us in there? We're dyadic _and_ supernatural. Shouldn't that have counted for something?"

"Hey." Malia grabbed Kira's shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Hey. Kira. It _did_ count for something. We're _alive_ , and Brenda's in custody. That counts for a damned lot." She squeezed Kira's shoulders. "I'm sorry we couldn't save Mike and Kelly. But we kept _ourselves_ alive and caught the bad guy, and I _will not_ apologize for that."

Kira smiled, small and tentative, and pressed a kiss to the corner of Malia's mouth. "Thank you," she said. "I don't know what I would do without you."

Sometimes Malia felt like that, too, in a more literal way. She just tended to keep the feeling to herself. She smiled, kissed Kira softly, and turned them toward the car. The sooner they could start the long night ahead of them, the sooner they could finish it.

* * *

"She did it because of reparative therapy?" Mason asked. Danny hadn't known his voice could sound that skeptical.

"Well, no," Stiles said. "She did it because she made a lot of bad choices, some of which weren't entirely under her own control. But, yeah, you could make a compelling argument that the mental strain of reparative 'therapy'—" He made the air quotes and everything, to Danny's chagrin. "—and her doomed efforts to live as a triadic played a big part in pushing her over the edge."

Cora shuddered. "How can people _do that_ to a kid?" she asked.

Jordan shrugged helplessly. "I don't know.  Honestly, it's even weirder that she _wasn't_ a kid."

Erica's eyebrow went up, and the spoon in her hand paused in its path to Quincy's mouth. "What?"

"Hennessey went through reparative therapy as an adult. Fifteen years ago. Voluntary and self-directed."

Mason let out a low whistle. "Dude, that is messed up."

"I'm glad you caught her," Hayden said emphatically. She smiled at Kira and Malia. "You guys have to be relieved, right?"

Kira opened her mouth and then paused. "Yeah," she said slowly. "We are."

Danny could see in Kira's expression—and Malia's, when he looked at her—that they were thinking about all the work that still needed to be done to bring the BCSD, the population of Beacon County at large, and probably the pack, up to snuff on dyadic issues. And Danny knew he, Stiles, and Jordan had a couple deeply unpleasant months ahead of them as they wrapped up their end of the case and turned it over for prosecution.

Yet he couldn't help but be the tiniest bit hopeful. Barbara Hennessey was off the streets, and if any good was to come of this, maybe it would be yet another light shone on the bullshit that was dyadic reparative therapy and other efforts to "fix" dyadics. It wouldn't make the situation perfect, but it might make it better.

Derek looked around the table and then outside. "Okay," he said suddenly. He stood and started clearing the table in front of and around him. Stiles squawked and grabbed the half-dozen green beans left on his plate, eating them out of his hand and glaring at Derek, who rolled his eyes. "Finish eating, clean up, and come outside. New Moon game night."

Cora's eyes lit up, and she air-fived Derek from her end of the table, where she, Boyd, and Erica had finally gotten Quincy to eat enough to call it a victory. "I haven't done that in _years_."

"I've never done it," Erica said, leaning back to let Boyd take her plate away.

Derek shrugged, uncomfortable as always about being the center of attention. "Something we used to do when we were kids. Gives the shifters a chance to practice tracking and sparring in the dark."

Danny raised an eyebrow at him. "What about non-shifters? Do we get to stay home and drink spiked cocoa?"

Derek laughed and squeezed Danny's hand. "You can if you want. But if you're willing, you guys can hide, and we'll try to find you."

Stiles' eyes lit up. "Deaton gave me this herb mix that makes humans virtually undetectable to werewolf noses. Could be fun to make you guys come up with other ways to find us." He gave Lydia an apologetic look. "Doesn't work on supernaturals, sorry."

Lydia pointed toward her feet, shrugging. "I'm not dressed for tromping in the woods."

" _I_ will be at the house," Melissa announced. "Stay with me and we'll drink spiked cocoa." She winked at Danny, and Lydia laughed brightly.

"Oh, Jordan!" Melissa said, touching his arm as he walked past her. "One of my coworkers has a daughter who graduated from Vassar and moved back to town at the end of the year. She just got a job with the county assessor's office, and she's interested in getting into the dating scene. Fran would _love_ to make introductions."

Jordan looked at Lydia, and they did couple-telepathy eyebrow speak for a second. He blushed and cleared his throat. "I appreciate the offer, Mel, but we're… not really looking. For now."

Lydia smiled wider. On the back deck, Derek, fully shifted, was sneezing over the herb mix Stiles was parceling out to the non-shifters.

Yeah. Things were going to get better.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> [Your author tumbls](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com/) and [your artist does, too](http://ufohnoparty.tumblr.com/).


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